


Dreams Wake You Up

by Fredegund



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha Wade Wilson, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Dehumanization, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mates, Omega Peter Parker, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Protective Wade Wilson, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con Elements, Slavery, Wade Wilson Takes Care of Peter Parker, Wade Wilson is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:02:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26183125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fredegund/pseuds/Fredegund
Summary: The world is horrible. Betas rule, alphas are treated like dumb brutes, and omegas... omegas are traded and sold, used and chained, treated like slaves. Deadpool can't possibly kill the entire world, and he can't kill himself to escape it, so he's stuck trying the best he can to tolerate existing. He saves omegas when he can, kills betas when he can, and lives an otherwise empty existence hiding away in his apartment.Peter grew up hidden away from the world, an omega not trained to submit. When he's finally found out and sold off, he thinks his life is over. And for a long time, it is. Years later, he's left abandoned in an alley, near dead and wishing for it, when along comes an alpha...All the hurt, all the comfort, please heed the tags and warnings.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Wade Wilson
Comments: 260
Kudos: 686
Collections: Hurt Peter Parker (mostly Spideypool)





	1. nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> I am super nervous to post this. 
> 
> There are graphic depictions of gang rape. If you're easily triggered or don't feel comfortable reading graphic depictions of rape, leave now. Ultimately, this is all about the hurt and subsequent comfort, ALL THE COMFORT COMING, but please take care of yourself and just don't read it if you don't like graphic depictions of rape.
> 
> I was writing something a lot lighter, and I posted it, but I've since deleted it because it didn't feel like the story I actually wanted to write. This one does. I'm going to be focused on this one for a while. But please don't read it if any of those tags bother you. Peter's in for a rough start.

1\. nightmares

-

-

-

The world is pretty fucking horrible.

No, really. It’s _terrible_. All around suck. Nightmares pale in comparison. _Deadpool’s_ nightmares pale in comparison, and Deadpool’s been tortured and maimed and blown up and cut in half, plus there was that time with the hell dimension and the brief affair with Lady Death, who’s got quite the horror kink, and every bad dream he’s ever had ends up with him shooting himself in the head for a break, so yeah. The world is pretty fucking horrible.

He’s been to a couple other alternate Earths, and he’s pretty sure his is the worst one out there. The other Deadpools don’t even know how good they’ve got it. Not sure exactly how it got to be this way. Not sure who fucked up their timeline and turned the world to shit, and if he did know he’d totes be time traveling and ganking that asshat, but here it is anyway. The world in all its shitty glory.

Sometimes he’s determined to help. Pitch in and save some people. (Kill some people)

Other times, he’s too depressed to function. Those days are spent naked in bed with the covers drawn up over his face, with the voices so loud in his head that it drowns out the noise from the world outside. He both hates and loves those voices. Hates them for being assholes to him from sun up to sun down, loves them for being so loud and overpowering that they can in fact make him forget about how shitty the world is for a few blissful minutes at a time. It’s pretty sad that the best times in his life right now are when Yellow and White are yelling at him about how fucking ugly and gross and useless he is. Ah, but those are indeed the good times.

Because every time he ventures outside, reality hits all over again.

This world is _fucking horrible_.

Honestly, he’d fuck off to an alternate Earth forever if he could. But getting access to alternate Earths isn’t easy, and it’s even harder to convince the molecules of his body to stay in a reality that doesn’t belong to him. He gets to stay maybe three hours before his atoms all rearrange and send him hurtling back to his original Earth. Which _really fucking sucks_.

He can’t even kill himself.

But oh, he does try. Loads of times. Plenty of times.

All the times.

It never sticks. He wakes back up sore, dizzy, and back to square one. Stuck in this truly nightmare universe.

Deadpool isn’t the only one trapped here, of course. Not by a long shot. He’s not even an omega, so he doesn’t have to deal with all the shit they have to deal with. He isn’t the one being strapped to tables (well, besides that time in Weapon X) and chained to fence posts. He’s not the one being passed around like a piece of meat, raped and degraded and talked over and tortured. It’s not even fair that he’s depressed about the world, because he doesn’t even have any right to be depressed about the world. He’s not one of its victims. Oh sure, there’s all sorts of prejudice levied at alphas. Deadpool’s heard them all. Dumb knothead. Stupid, slow, caveman, brute. His parents, two betas, would have given him up to an alpha detainment center at birth, except they had a hard enough time getting pregnant with him and figured he’d be their only kid. Sometimes he wonders if the alpha detainment centers would have been a kinder alternative to their less-than tender caregiving.

But if alphas are a bullied minority, omegas are –

Just.

Well, Deadpool prefers not to think of it.

Prefers not to think of the brothels that take omega babies, raise them up like breeding stock, sold off at their first hint of a heat to rich sick fucks. Prefers not to think of the chains in every back alley bolted to the concrete, there for any self-respecting beta who wants to teach their omegas lessons. Deadpool’s killed his fair share of betas in those back alleys, but in this world that’s never been enough. It never actually helps the omegas to kill their owners, because then what? There’s nowhere for omegas to go. Nowhere safe. Just – the next owner. The next rich sick fuck. The next holier-than-thou beta who thinks they’re better for being born beta. When Deadpool’s finally had enough and tries to step in, it’s always the same story. The omegas see him for the dumb knothead he is and don’t even let him help them, refuse to go anywhere with him. They just – he gets them unchained and they all just – sit there in the alleys, waiting for their next beta owner, begging whoever comes by to take them and claim them.

They don’t know any other life.

And an unclaimed omega? Nothing good ever happens to them.

Other times they’re limp with exhaustion, too injured even to protest as Deadpool picks them up and walks them to a clinic. He’ll stay until they’re well enough to wake up, stay because they’ve got no one else to stay with them, even as he feels awkward and big and _judged_ in those stuffy sterile waiting rooms. Alphas are uncommon and people like to gawk. They especially like to gawk at Deadpool, who’s not only an alpha but a scarred, scary-looking alpha. Scaring people has its advantages when he’s on a job, but shit does it suck when he’s just trying to help. There isn’t any room for a scarred, big ugly alpha in this world to offer anyone help. Nobody accepts anything from him and it’s all – it’s all just –

 _Fucking horrible_ , okay?

He’s wearing a hoodie pulled low over his face, hands gloved, no skin showing unless someone draws close enough to peer under the hood and glimpse his face. He doesn’t like to go outside, but sometimes he needs groceries and sometimes he likes to check on Weasel, one of the good ones in a world full of shitty ones. Weasel’s a beta, but he hires alphas, and he doesn’t leer at the omegas. He’s all monosyllabic and neutral grays, and he isn’t ashamed to be friends with Wade the way most people would be. He owns a bar in one of the shadier areas of town, caters to all sorts of criminals… but it’s good. When the entire world sucks ass, petty criminals are some of the least shitty humans to hang with. They’ve all been at the bottom, so they fit. Deadpool isn’t someone who fits in a lot of places. Sister Margaret’s might be one of the only places, in fact.

That’s why he’s maybe a little protective of it.

So when he trudges up to Sister Margaret’s tonight and sees the newly-installed hitching post by the front door, sees the one nude omega who’s tied to it by her wrists and kneeling, shivering, on the sidewalk, Deadpool sees red.

He stomps past the post, jerks the steel door open so hard it clangs against the brick wall. Inside, people are drinking and playing pool and smoking, but the buzz of the familiar atmosphere stops as soon as he enters, like a storm cloud raining on everyone’s parade. He tromps straight to the bar and grabs Weasel’s shirt collar, yanking his wide-eyed deer-in-the-headlights beta self over the counter. Guns cock behind Deadpool and he knows he’s ruffling some feathers, but he’s too enraged to care. Too _betrayed_ to care.

“What the hell?” he says, low and demanding. “You got a _hitching post_?”

Weasel tries to shrink away, pulling at his shirt. “C’mon man, it’s not –”

“It’s a fucking hitching post!” Wade shakes him. A few voices behind him are demanding he let the bartender go, all gruff and outraged. Wade flips them the bird and says, “What’s next, chains in the alley?”

But Weasel’s sudden stillness and wide eyes are telling.

Deadpool lets him go, pushing him away so that he stumbles into the alcohol on the shelves behind him. Wade finds himself sitting on a barstool, shocked, the wind kicked out of him by the unmistakable truth that’s staring him in the face. Behind him, there’s rustling sounds like weapons being lowered, stuffed into waistbands. Somebody takes their turn at a pool table and the balls striking each other sounds far away. It feels like he’s not even in his own body right now. Sister Margaret’s was supposed to be the place where Deadpool could escape the realities of this shit world, and now – _fuck_.

Weasel looks awfully guilty behind those coke-bottle glasses.

“You _didn’t._ ”

Weasel flinches. “I didn’t _want_ to –”

“You had chains installed in the alley too?”

“I didn’t want to!”

“I can’t believe you’d –”

“They were gonna shut me down, man!” Weasel says. Deadpool stops. “They were threatening to close us down for noncompliance. If I didn’t let them install –”

Weasel cuts off, clears his throat. He turns away and bends under the counter to grab up the good stuff, booze he saves for special occasions. Deadpool constantly needles him to break it out and he never caves. He pulls it out, now, pours them each a shot glass. As soon as he slides one over the counter toward Deadpool, he catches it and downs it in one burning gulp, thunks the empty glass back on the counter. Wordlessly, Weasel refills it. When he downs his own, Weasel sighs. His shoulders are slumped, bags under his eyes, hair limp and greasy. Now that Deadpool’s looking closer, Weasel doesn’t look like quite the triumphant beta he’d been half-expecting to find when he saw that fucking hitching post. Deadpool slumps onto the bar, head hitting with a solid, smarting smack. He moans.

“I hate the world,” he mumbles with his cheek smooshed against the cold surface.

Weasel hums. “What the fuck can I do about it? Besides drink. I can do that.”

“You know I’m gonna kill a fuck ton of motherfuckers out there,” Deadpool says.

“I figured.”

“Like, right now, probably. If there’s a beta out there right now using those chains –”

“I get it, man,” Weasel cuts him off. “I’ve already got Marley and Jones on standby for all the bodies. The chains were installed, what, three days ago? And I can’t stop anybody from using them. The alleys belong to the public, yadda yadda. So, I’ve been doing what I do best and turning a blind eye at all the people going out there. But shit, it skeeves me out. To be honest, I’m glad you’re gonna do damage control –”

“Anybody out there right now?” Deadpool’s tone is dark.

Weasel shrugs. “Blind eye. I don’t know.”

Deadpool – Wade – gets it. The only way to stay even remotely sane in this fucked-up universe is to turn a blind eye to all the crap occasionally. Unfortunately, this is Sister Margaret’s. This is supposed to be the one place Deadpool can get away from it. From the prejudice against alphas and the omega brutalities _both_. This is supposed to be _his spot_. Is it any wonder his blind eye is refusing to turn right now? Is it any wonder the urge to kill someone is so close to the surface? Pulling himself to an upright position, peeling his face off the bar, he turns in his seat and scans the crowd, wondering which one of these faces owns that shivering omega girl who’d been tied to the post outside. And sure, she’s not being raped or mauled or tortured at the moment, but it activates every violent urge he’s ever had that a literal _human person_ is forced to kneel in the cold _naked_ while whoever thinks they _own_ her gets to drink with his buddies and be merry in warm comfort.

Someone in here is about to die.

But first. Deadpool shakes his empty shot glass in Weasel’s face until it’s refilled.

Downs another shot.

Then, slamming the glass down, Deadpool marches toward the back door.

If someone’s chained in the alley, a whole _mess_ of people are about to die.

And honestly, at this point, Deadpool’s looking forward to it

-

-

-

You’re not supposed to refuse your owner anything.

You’re not – not a _person._ You don’t get to have _opinions._ You don’t get to have a _voice_.

But Peter – Peter _was_ a person. For the first seventeen years of his life, he was a person. Aunt May and Uncle Ben treated him like a person, like a son. He never went to school like a real person would, but they taught him how to read, how to write. He never played with other kids like a real person would, but Aunt May would play superheroes with him in their warm little house, and Uncle Ben spent countless days building trainsets with Peter in their basement. It didn’t register to Peter that his guardians were doing anything illegal until it’d been too late to save them. They loved him like a son and suffered for it, in the end. Because apparently Peter isn’t a real person like he grew up to believe, and it was wrong of them to treat him like one. Peter shouldn’t have his own opinions because Peter is an omega, and omegas are holes only. Omegas aren’t meant to spend their heats alone in their bedrooms, the way his aunt and uncle taught him. Heats are meant to be spent with their legs spread and their holes filled, servicing real people. Betas, mostly. Sometimes alphas use him, too, but they’re few and far between, knots so big they rip when they’re pulled out. Even when he’s not in heat, Peter’s supposed to service the real people, to sit on their cocks and bounce when he’s told, to bend over and take whatever he’s told to take.

It’s been a hard, long transition.

Five years, now? Six?

Peter’s lost count, can barely remember what life looked like before those cops stormed Aunt May’s house, before he’d been stripped and prodded and collared and sold. Owners liked the thrill of having a willful omega at first, it seemed. Enjoyed beating him when he spoke, liked mounting him while he kicked and bucked and yelled at them to stop, liked holding him down and taking what they wanted. Most omegas aren’t raised to think of themselves as real people. Most omegas never fight.

Peter fought.

At first, anyway. For a long time, he fought.

But he’s been taken too many times to count by too many betas to count, and he’s tired. There are what feel like permanent rope burns on his wrists and ankles, his back tattered from beatings, his hole so used it gapes. He’s finally starting to realize that this – this is the world. This is the whole world outside of his Aunt and Uncle’s warm home they’d tried to give him. The entire world is – is just –

 _Horrible_.

And all the people in it are _worse_ than horrible.

His owner this time bought him for practically nothing. Omegas go cheap, these days, especially the ones who’ve been used as much as Peter has. Cheap omegas are expected to be docile, to do what they’re told. So when his owner, a rich beta named Frank, sat back on his desk chair, freed his cock, and told Peter to sit on it, Peter was supposed to have crawled across his office floor to sit on it. He was supposed to have serviced the real person who bought him during the man’s lunch break. Instead, two of Frank’s co-workers witnessed Peter saying no.

This isn’t his first time in a back alley, chained to the slimy concrete.

But it’s the first time he’s been left like this for so long.

It’s the first time an owner’s just – just _abandoned_ him here.

Two days, at least, with his ass high in the air, wrists and neck chained to the ground, ankles chained to posts and spread out. His owner had taped a piece of paper on his back before he’d left, but Peter hadn’t known what it said until hours later, when a beta knocked the paper off mid-ride and it’d fallen to the ground beside him. Most omegas never learn how to read. He almost wishes he didn’t know how to read, either, when he reads the scrawled note left taped onto him.

_Free to use or take_

Peter’s been sold plenty of times. He’s never been – never been _free to take_.

And nobody – nobody takes him.

They just use him, instead, like he’s not even worth it, leering at his torn hole and commenting to friends about how damaged he is. They talk over him like he can’t hear them or can’t understand. They stick their cocks down his throat and laugh about how gross Peter is with so many people’s cum dried or dripping all over him. They speculate that he must be diseased by now even as they use him themselves. Then they inevitably add their own cum to the mess that’s caked on him, zip themselves back up, slap him on the ass, and leave. Peter feels so weak he can hardly even lift his own head at this point, sick with hunger and thirst, barely conscious enough to whimper any time someone new sticks something in his hole. He’s had cocks, bottles, boots, who even knows what else stuck up there over the past two days, stuck in this alley. Nobody’s going to take him with them. He knows it, now. He’d hoped, that first day, but he’s only gotten dirtier and weaker with each passing minute, and he knows he won’t be leaving this alley alive. He’ll be chained here and raped until he dies of thirst, then hopefully his body can be discarded. And he – Peter almost welcomes it. Leaving this horrible world and everyone in it. The only way out is to die, and laying here chained to the ground, covered in cuts and cum, Peter wants it.

In this moment, he wants it.

A thick steel door creaks open down the alley. Peter whines low in his throat but doesn’t move, can’t move, just lays there as footsteps and mocking laughter get louder and closer. And then there are hands on him, rough hands that slap and poke and prod. Three betas crowd around him, laugh when Peter flinches. One sticks the toe of his boot into Peter’s loose hole and kicks a little. Another unzips and shoves a hard cock down Peter’s throat, who swallows almost reflexively, lips wrapping immediately around the dirty pungent organ. His throat is dry and it hurts, but it gets lost in all the other hurts. He hears the sick squelch of someone entering him from behind, the grunt of apparent disappointment from the beta, who complains that he’s too loose. They work out a position that lets both betas enter him at the same time, then, and finally the friction of being stretched by two cocks at once seems to satisfy them. Peter’s mostly incoherent, pain faraway, floating on the edge of unconsciousness, wondering if this is the moment where the world will fall away, hoping for it, oh God, hoping for it –

“No wonder no one’ll take him,” the one in his mouth says, laughing.

“Yeah,” another grunts as he thrusts, in and out, beside his friend. “Too loose, still.”

“Never seen an omega this far gone.”

“It’s pretty disgusting, actually –”

“Makes for a pretty good cum dump, though. Look at it all –”

“Hey!” Peter’s face is jostled, slapped. He moans around the cock in his mouth, throat trying and failing to swallow. “Think the little fucker’s falling asleep on me, his mouth keeps going slack. Does he even feel you guys at all right now?”

“Don’t blame me, I make omegas _cry_ I’m so big –”

“Well this one’s _falling asleep_ , you must be losing your edge –”

More laughter, egging each other on. The two in his ass take the playful ribbing as a challenge because they’re suddenly speeding up, all rough jabbing thrusts that bump into each other, and Peter does feel it then, whining around his mouthful as he’s stabbed from behind by two hard cocks at once.

It happens in a blur. It might not be happening at all, he’s too delirious to know for sure.

But the betas behind him both yelp, twin cries of outrage as they’re ripped out of him and thrown somewhere. The one in his mouth pulls out quickly, and Peter hangs his head, saliva running down his chin, limp. His vision keeps sliding in and out of focus. There’s scuffling sounds behind him, nothing he can see, then sudden quiet. Peter tries to keep his eyes open, heavy as he blinks them. Then footsteps getting close once more. Peter whines at the sound, moaning, unable even to speak out in protest. Not another one, not another one, please –

But it is another one. A man, he crouches in front of Peter, and when he’s close enough to smell through all the other smells clogging up the alley, he reeks like –

Like alpha.

Peter whines again. When the man presses a soft hand against his sweaty, matted hair, Peter flinches away, weakly trying to shuffle out of reach. Betas are bad enough, but an alpha –

Please, please no, please –

“Shh,” the man above him coos. Pets his hair again, Peter too weak to shift away.

His hand disappears. He moves to Peter’s side, out of sight. Some shuffling, again, but this time nothing else enters him, there’s nothing except the jostling of the chains around his wrists, one by one, until there’s hands sliding his arms out of the chains, soft petting hands and a voice that shushes him when he whimpers. Those hands snake up to his collar, and Peter’s too out of it to realize when that chain unravels from around his neck, too. He’s so far gone he barely feels it when the alpha releases his ankles from the posts, barely feels it when he’s picked up from the concrete and held against a solid chest, a rapidly beating heart. Peter moans again, wordless, tongue heavy in his mouth. One hand finds the hoodie he’s pressed against and he grips at the fabric, holding on. His head lolls against the alpha’s shoulder. Somewhere far away, he feels a deep well of panic rising up. Panic that he’s being taken _by an alpha_ , panic that out of all the betas who’ve used him the past two days, it just had to be an _alpha_ to finally take enough of an interest to remove him from the alley. He’s never been owned by an alpha. Omegas owned by alphas don’t last long, and he’s already so weak. He won’t – this isn’t – _why_ –

But all that is muted.

Peter falls in and out of consciousness like half-formed dreams passing in swirling colors.

People’s voices, soft, hard, jostled hands.

Bright lights, a cold, hard bed. A prick on his hand. More voices.

That soft shushing voice from the alley, the rich musk of an alpha, bitter stress pheromones and the undercurrent of smoked meat. Peter’s nose twitches and he turns his face against the smells, head lolling. _“Don’t I always pay…? C’mon, you know I’m good for it…”_

_“Knothead alpha brought in another one.”_

_“Bad shape, not sure he’ll last the night –”_

_“Why d’you think he keeps bringing them in? Not claiming them –”_

Peter floats.

-

-

-

Deadpool pokes his head into Sister Margaret’s only long enough to catch Weasel’s eye at the bar and yell at him to fetch Marley and Jones. Weasel’s frowning face is the last thing he sees before he’s letting the door slam after him and hightailing it out of the alley. The omega clinic three blocks away sees him a lot, and they’re just gonna have to see him again tonight because this dude looks like he’s nearly dead already. His head keeps lolling this way and that, lifeless except for the hand that’s clutching at Deadpool’s hoodie. Every time the little omega whines, Deadpool’s heart lurches. He might have been too late for this one, who’s bleeding and cut to bits and so pale it hurts to see, caked with dirt and dried cum and a patchwork of whip scars to rival Deadpool’s own. The omega’s face isn’t scarred, though, just dirty and bruised, dark hair matted and sweat-soaked. He’d be a cutie if he weren’t about to die from very obvious and prolonged torture.

The lady behind the clinic desk sighs very deeply when she sees him thundering inside.

“You again?” She complains, exasperated. “How many omegas are you going to –”

“This one’s hurt bad,” Deadpool says, arms wrapped around him. He can feel his face settling into a scowl as she stands there staring and not immediately springing into action. She should be springing into action. “Think you can get him set up with the good stuff any time soon before he, you know, _dies_?”

She eyes him, wary. “Right, right, I’ll page –”

But Deadpool’s already walking away, storming into the triage room to get the omega seen _right fucking now_. And who cares what these doctor shits say about him, who cares that he’s feeding into their biases about alphas, acting like an idiot who doesn’t even know how to wait to be seen, bringing battered omega after battered omega here as though he were the one who’s battered them. They think he hurts these kids himself, but who cares, right? As long as this one gets to live, it doesn’t matter if they call the cops to get him hauled away, doesn’t matter that this omega tried so valiantly to get away from him when he smelled that he was an alpha. Even out of it and near dead, the omega didn’t want Deadpool helping him. It’s nothing new. And it doesn’t matter.

Yellow and White are roaring in his head _and it doesn’t matter_.

They have to pry the omega out of his arms. For some reason, Deadpool doesn’t want to let him go. But they have to pry the omega’s hand off of his hoodie, too, so Deadpool doesn’t feel too bad about the weird surge of emotions in him as the omega is placed on a gurney and wheeled away. Omegas don’t usually cling to him. They’re usually fighting to get away even as he’s dragging their brutalized bodies to one clinic or another. It’s only natural that his alpha instincts are kicking in for the first omega who clung to him. He wants to go with the omega. Long-dead instincts buzz like angry bees inside him, making him pace the floor of the waiting room. People shy away from him, stare at him, whisper about the dumb brute alpha who’s pacing like a caged animal, but it’s nothing new. No, what _is_ new is how every atom in his body keeps urging him to charge through those doors and scent out the omega, find his room, keep anyone from touching him. The doctors _have_ to treat omegas clinically. Sworn oaths and all. They can’t _use_ the omegas like society says they’re meant to be used, not when they’re patients in the clinic.

In theory, Deadpool knows the omega is safe back there. He’s safer at the clinic than he’d be anywhere else.

Still, Deadpool paces.

Finally, _finally_ , a bored nurse comes out to let him know that the omega is in bad shape and that it’d be too expensive to treat everything that needs to be treated. He’d need to stay for round-the-clock fluids for at least a few days, not to mention a surgery needed for an internal injury that’s bleeding, and the STD that’d need a round of antibiotics. He’s got an issue with his bladder, too, and needs a catheter. They don’t usually waste resources on an omega that would need so much work done.

Deadpool didn’t know it was possible, but he hates the world even more right now.

“Do all that shit,” Deadpool insists. “I can pay, you know I’m good for it –”

The nurse clicks her tongue at him, shaking her head. “Why would you even let him get this bad if you wanted him to live –”

“You have to treat him,” Deadpool says, hard and demanding. The alpha in him feels restless, enraged, caged. His eyes take on a red tinge. The woman steps back, wide-eyed. “If I pay, you have to treat him. I want him to live and he _will_ be treated.”

“It was irresponsible of you –”

“Just treat him!”

He might have roared. A little. Just a little. But a roaring alpha is like a charging bull to a world that hates them, fears them, thinks they’re too dumb to control themselves. He’s tackled to the ground by three security guards shortly thereafter, hauled away from the clinic and shoved onto the sidewalk. Deadpool lets himself be manhandled only after he gets the nurse to agree to treat the omega, only after he’s agreed to pay for the treatment. He imagines killing the guards, killing the smug nurse, killing the whole entire shit world. But that omega’s in the world. Deadpool needs to stick around to make sure he’s actually treated. He agrees to wait outside but demands to be kept updated. White and Yellow have a lot to say about the whole thing. None of it’s any good.

[Just go, bro. That omega’s toast either way.]

[[I bet he wants to die. What, you wanna torture the poor fuck by making him live?]]

[Just because you can’t die, you want everyone else to have to –]

[[And you let your eyes go! What the fuck, you never let your eyes go!]]

[It’s that omega, he’s all hot and bothered –]

[[You realize as soon as he’s conscious, he’s gonna give you the boot, right?]]

[This is pathetic, I wanna go home –]

“Oh stop your whining.” Deadpool plops his ass down on the sidewalk and leans his back against the clinic, right outside the doors. His head thumps on the wall behind him. It’s chilly out, but his heart’s still pumping him full of adrenaline and he’s sweating through the hoodie. He’d take the thing off, except then he’d be risking terrifying that omega even more when he finally gets to see him, and also he’s not in the mood to deal with even more stares as people pass on the street. He closes his eyes to block out the world, because if he has to see even one more sad little omega on a leash, shivering from the cool autumn night air, Deadpool might break and start a massacre or something. He’s still not allowed in Europe after that last one, still dodging the occasional overzealous assassin.

[That’ll never stop being funny, bee tee dubs.]

[[An assassin coming after someone who can’t die, y’mean?]]

[Duh!]

He doesn’t wear his Deadpool suit anymore. It’s too recognizable. Everybody wants Deadpool’s head on a spike for one reason or another. Most of the world hates him for constantly killing rich betas. There’s a Resistance, and they try to help omegas too, all hush-hush hard-to-find. But even they’ve refused to work with Deadpool, seeing him as nothing more than a liability to the cause. They don’t want a violent, wanted alpha supporting them. He’s been captured twice for being too difficult to control and unkillable. Both times sucked enough for the next two lifetimes, thanks. Weasel gets guards snooping at the bar for him even now, off and on. So he’s retired the Deadpool suit. At least until everybody who’s after him inevitably dies of old age and he’s free to don it once more. He can kill people just as easily in a hoodie, anyway, as evidenced by those three betas in the alleyway tonight.

“I should buy that omega some clothes,” he mumbles to himself.

[Ooh, shopping trip!]

[[Should get him a plushie to cuddle, too. Like. I’m just saying.]]

[Yellow’s a big ol’ softie.]

[[Shut the fuck up.]]

“A plushie is a _great_ idea,” Deadpool gushes.

After so much practice living in this unbearable world, it’s easy to turn it all off. Easy to jump up and skip off to a store for a big old dose of comfort shopping. He buys clothes and toiletries and a backpack to put it all in, a phone for the omega, some sneakers that hopefully might fit his feet. He guesses at all the sizes, actually, but the omega is emaciated, small, so it’s easy to guestimate. He’s feeling sad and alone and he can’t stop thinking about that girl tied to that hitching post, so he buys warm clothes for his omega, all long sleeves and comfortable cotton blends. A big fluffy sweater, too, and then of course the plushie, an adorable, soft bear with rainbow fur and a pert little button nose. The bear won’t fit into the backpack and neither will the shoes. He returns to the clinic and sits outside it, bear in his arms and the backpack and shoes beside him. Deadpool feels at least marginally less likely to murder someone, now. He cuddles the omega’s bear.

Then he settles in to do something he _hates_.

He waits.


	2. the clinic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this all literally today, I'm so inspired. Thank you for your kind comments, this thing made me so nervous you don't even know, but you guys are amazing. 
> 
> I expect to be able to update this at least once or twice a month.  
> Until next time <3

2\. the clinic

-

-

-

He wakes up groggy and sore.

He’s got – there are wires attached to him. He’s strapped down to a hard bed, white lights blaring overhead, rhythmic beeping somewhere in the room. A clinic, then. Peter’s been taken to a clinic only a couple other times when he might have died otherwise. Owners drop omegas off at clinics when they’ve been too rough with them, but they aren’t free. Omega clinics aren’t covered by any sort of health insurance. Every time he’s been sent to one, he’s paid a steep price afterward, body passed around at parties, loaned out to his owner’s friends. It’s never anything new, just more of the same, but the abuse always ramps up after a clinic visit, as though Peter needs to pay back whatever the treatments cost with his body and his service and his obedience. But his owner is gone, he remembers suddenly. He left him in that alley with that sign on his back. So how is Peter here, how is he going to pay –

The alpha.

There was – Peter’s heartrate kicks up. He jostles the restraints tying him to the bed, pulling at them. It’s useless, of course, and he stops trying after a few panicked breaths, chest heaving, lets his body go limp on the bed and turns his face toward the wall. He squeezes his eyes shut, bright lights hurting his head. His throat’s still sore, and _oh God_ his ass feels like it’s on fire, shooting bursts of agony every time he moves even an inch. He was supposed to have died in that alley and now – now he’s here. With wires coming out of him, strapped to an unforgiving table in a disorienting, bright room. It’s cold, unbearably cold, and he’s naked and uncovered, goosebumps trailing along his arms, teeth chattering. That alpha brought him to a clinic, but… why? He can’t remember if he even got a good look at the alpha, can remember only the way that he smelled, the alpha-sour scent of anger and bitter stress in the air, the undercurrent of smoked meat and campfires. But even as he remembers the scent of anger, he remembers that the alpha’s voice was soft. Gentle? That can’t be right. Peter was too out of it, can’t trust his own memory, as broken and choppy as it is.

But he’s in a clinic. The alpha brought him to a clinic.

He must be – he must intend on being Peter’s new owner.

An _alpha_ owner.

Please, please no, please –

The door opens. Peter turns his face toward it and blinks his eyes open, watching the beta nurse approach. She checks his vitals, fiddles with the I.V. drip, writes something down on a clipboard. She sees him watching and frowns at him, her stern, disapproving face enough to make Peter flinch and turn his head back toward the wall. He stares at the white wall while she fiddles with something around his leg, a bag crinkling, some of the wires jostling. Her hands will touch him without warning and his heart lurches every time, whole body flinching away. She snaps at him to stay still and he tries, but everything hurts and he apparently isn’t supposed to look at her, so he can’t tell when she’s going to touch and where, and he can’t control the flinches, can’t –

“The alpha can stop loitering outside now,” she says suddenly, her voice cutting through the rhythmic background beeps and making Peter flinch all over again. And then a hand slaps him across the face and she snaps at him to stop moving again, her voice angry and strained. Peter screws his eyes shut and tries to breathe, tries to block out her movements and her voice. If he doesn’t, he’ll just keep flinching. But it’s hard to block out her voice, because she’s on an intercom system or talking on a walkie talkie or something and she’s talking about an alpha, which must be _his_ alpha, the alpha who plans to own him, and he can’t not hear –

“He’s been out there scaring customers _all night_ ,” a different voice is saying, static crackling.

A cabinet is opened, some rustling. The nurse snorts, says, “This one’s stable enough now, if he wants to keep waiting he can do it in here. Let me leave first, though, I don’t wanna run into the beast –”

“We’re going to let him stay in the omega’s room?”

“Where else?” the nurse says. “At least in here we won’t have to look at him anymore.”

Peter bites his lip and tries not to speak, tries not to whimper, tries not to panic.

“What if he – will the omega survive?”

“We did our part,” the nurse sounds annoyed. A cabinet door slams. Peter does whimper, then, curls up on the table as much as he can while restrained, cringing away from the nurse who sees him moving again and whaps him over the head. All along, she keeps talking, “If that idiot alpha decides to use him in here, that’s on him. We’ll inform him of the risks, get him to sign a liability waver –”

She’s apparently done with whatever she was doing, because her voice gets further away as she leaves, the door clicking shut behind her. Peter takes a deep breath as soon as he’s alone, but he can’t calm his racing heart. They’re letting that alpha into his room. They’re – he’s never had an owner come to his room in a clinic before. They’re supposed to drop omegas off here and come back when they’re healed. He won’t heal if the alpha can just – can just come into the room. He won’t get better, and then what’s even the point of being in a clinic if he’s just going to be used some more while he’s here, this isn’t –

He doesn’t even have time to panic about it properly.

Because before he knows it, his door is opening again. Peter isn’t looking, but he smells him.

That campfire, cooked meat smell. The alpha.

The door opens slowly, though, creaking on its hinges. Shuffling steps, then the door’s clicking shut. The alpha is moving things around, sets something down. The chair in the room slides across the floor and then the alpha is sitting in it right beside Peter’s bed. Peter’s face is turned toward the wall, but he can feel the alpha’s presence, can feel him there right beside him.

Then there’s quiet.

Peter holds his breath, but nothing happens.

There’s just – quiet.

And then, quietly, the alpha starts to – to sing.

A soft little melody, slightly off pitch. Something about a flying machine. Peter keeps trying to hold his breath, keeps trying to stay braced for whatever’s coming, but the little tune in that rich, soft voice relaxes him despite himself. His body just – unbraces. The longer they sit there with the alpha doing nothing except singing, the more he can feel himself relaxing into the table, the calmer his heart gets. But it’s – he knows something is coming. This can’t be it. He tries to stay focused because any minute now there will be hands on him. He’ll flinch like he did with the nurse and then there will be _hell to pay_ , okay, this quiet, relaxing little song can’t last and he’s got to stay ready, got to –

The song does taper off, finally. Peter, near dozing at that point, jerks awake at the silence, his whole body tensing all over again because he moved when he wasn’t supposed to in front of an alpha who owns him now, and –

The alpha starts talking.

“I got that song from _Titanic_. There’s probably a ton more words to it, but Rose sang it in the middle of the ocean while her lover boy was freezing to death right in front of her, and I promise I’m not gonna start ranting about how they should have kept trying to get Jack on that fucking door, _he could have fit, damn it, screw that whole mythbusters episode that claims he couldn’t_ – but I promise not to go there because once I go there I can talk for _hours_ and _nobody_ wants _that_. Anyway, Titanic. I like that movie because they didn’t cast a single alpha. They could have made that asshole that Rose was supposed to marry an alpha, he was all angry and mean and terrible, but no, he was a beta! That was super progressive of them back then. Only alphas were ever supposed to be angry and mean and terrible, right? But not in Titanic. The dudes who made that movie gave the world the middle finger and said you know what, betas can be assholes too.” The alpha pauses here, like maybe he’s waiting on an answer?

Peter doesn’t know what to say.

_Peter doesn’t know what to say._

This feels like a test he’s not passing. He can’t possibly pass it. Should he agree? He does agree, but he can’t say he agrees, because then he’s saying that betas are assholes, and that’s – that’s not something Peter’s allowed to say or think or believe. He isn’t allowed opinions, anyway. He isn’t allowed to speak. Betas don’t like it when he speaks, he can’t imagine how an alpha would react if he tried it in front of him, this is a test he can’t pass –

He says nothing.

But he’s tense all over, again, wondering what will happen next. Now that he’s ignoring an alpha, an alpha who owns him now. It’s got to be something truly horrible –

The alpha keeps talking.

“You’re gonna be in here a few more days, at least. They did some kind of surgery on you last night for internal bleeding. I’ve been told that went well. You’ve got an STD, but it’s one of the lame ones. Antibiotics will clear it up fast. Um, they had to get you set up with a catheter, but in my opinion that’s pretty cool, you don’t have to get up to go to the bathroom. Sometimes I pee where I’m sitting, too, only there’s no cool bag to catch it so all my clothes get soaked. So. I’m jealous of your pee bag! Hmm, what else, what else… they had to stitch up your ass, some kind of lateral-whatever surgery, which, _yikes_. Are you in pain right now?”

The abrupt question makes Peter freeze up.

What’s the right answer, he needs to answer, _what’s the right answer_ –

“Aw, honey, you’re okay.” The alpha’s voice is soft again. Is he – is he talking to Peter? “I want to know if you’re in pain.”

Peter tries to swallow. His throat still hurts. He keeps his eyes closed.

“Nothing’s gonna happen to you,” the alpha says, still with the soft, soft tone.

“Y-yes,” Peter manages, just barely, hoarse and braced.

But again, nothing happens to him. No slaps, no hands, no touches at all. The alpha _thanks him for telling him_ , then the chair squeaks as the alpha moves away. Peter hears footsteps, the door opening, the alpha retreating. In the quiet of the empty room, Peter wills himself to breathe, in and out, in and out, slow intentional breaths. He’s not sure what he’s just done, talking with his voice, talking to an alpha, admitting he’s in pain. And he – he is. Everything’s sore. Laying on this table is _painful._ But he feels like maybe he shouldn’t have admitted it. Maybe he should have said he was fine. Because pain can always get worse, and he should be grateful instead of saying he’s in pain. He should have said he’s much better, he should have thanked the alpha for the clinic, for bringing him here, for letting him live. Admitting he’s in pain is dangerously close to claiming the clinic isn’t helping, that the clinic isn’t good enough. Oh, God, he should have said no, this was another test and he couldn’t pass it –

The door opens. Peter flinches as though that sound were a gun.

He can’t stop himself from looking, now, eyes wide and wild as he jerks his head to see what’s happening. The nurse from before stomps inside the room, grumbling to herself, her face pinched and frowning. She grabs his hand and, when he whines and flinches away, fingers curling away from her rough grip, the nurse uses her other hand to slap him again. He cuts off another whine and lets his head stay turned back to the wall, tries to breathe, breathe, breathe. The I.V. twists uncomfortably before she finally lets go, and his hand curls into a fist, jagged nails digging into his palm. She stomps away, door clicking shut behind her.

Quiet, again.

And – oh. _Oh_. Whatever she gave him works fast, sharp edges of pain smoothing out all over. His head feels full, eyes drooping. He sucks in a breath and suddenly it doesn’t hurt to breathe, doesn’t hurt when he wiggles. His body feels boneless and he hardly even feels the hard table underneath him anymore. It’s – it’s good. He feels – feels good.

He feels… good?

The door opens again, that slow creak.

He rolls his head over and sees the alpha creeping back into the room. He’s big and broad-shouldered, as big as any alpha he’d ever seen, but he’s hunching his shoulders and he’s got his hands stuffed in oversized pockets on his hoodie. His face is shadowed under the hood, pulled low, but it’s so unbearably bright in this room that Peter can see that he’s – scarred. A lot. His whole face is red and pockmarked, scabbed. He sees Peter looking and freezes in the doorway, eyes wide. Peter feels good, still, for the first time in years he can’t feel anything but good, his head floating on a cloud, his body so light and airy he can’t feel it.

The alpha lets the door close behind him. He edges toward the bed, Peter’s eyes following him to the chair, which is closer than Peter expected it to be, right next to Peter’s head.

“Feel any better?” the alpha says.

Peter blinks. He can feel his own eyelids blinking in slow motion.

The alpha looks – nervous?

“Y-yes,” Peter says. It occurs to him that maybe he feels good because the alpha told them to give him pain meds. It occurs to him that maybe he feels good because he admitted to the alpha that he didn’t feel good. The alpha – fixed it?

“You sure?” the alpha says. He keeps wiggling on the chair, this way and that. He takes his hands out of his pockets and wrings his hands together, but he’s wearing gloves that squeak, so he stops. Sets his hands in his lap instead, fingers drumming on his leg. He looks so stiff and uncomfortable on that chair that Peter isn’t sure why he’s even sitting here. Why is this alpha in the room with him? Talking to him? Singing? What can all this mean? Why hasn’t he touched him?

The alpha said something. Peter didn’t hear it. He whines, suddenly upset not to have heard, not to have listened.

The alpha’s face looks – soft, eyes wide and brown. He shushes Peter like he had in that alley, cooing. A hand comes up to Peter’s head, petting his hair, but Peter sees the hand coming and flinches away from it. He screws his eyes shut again, confused, painless but scared, terrified of what this all means, terrified of that gloved hand coming toward him, of this alpha who smells like fire. Alphas aren’t good. No, _betas_ aren’t good. Alphas are _worse_. They’re vicious. They hurt, and hurt, and hurt, and – but this one hasn’t hurt. Not yet. This one doesn’t even slap him like the nurse did when he flinches. He just – that hand lands on his head, featherlight and soft, and he starts petting his head, petting through his matted, gross hair until Peter’s face relaxes, until he turns his head back and slow-blinks heavy eyes to stare at this alpha who’s doing everything wrong. The alpha starts talking again, quiet and soft, words that Peter can’t focus on through the pain meds working through him. The words must not matter because the alpha doesn’t punish him for not listening, doesn’t do anything at all except keep petting his head.

Peter never thought in a million years he’d be able to fall asleep in a room with an alpha.

Must be the pain meds, he thinks.

And then he’s out.

-

-

-

Deadpool’s never been in the omega’s room in the clinic before.

If he had, there would have been hell to pay much, much sooner. The omega is laying restrained to a table, hooked up to I.V.s and monitors and all sorts of wires. Everybody knows that hospitals are fucking cold, kept cold on purpose to kill germs or whatever, but they didn’t cover the omega at all, not even with a sheet, and he’s still dirty and cum-crusted all over. They cleaned off his stomach for the surgery but nothing else, and he’s laying here on a hard table with nothing but wires. _Restrained_. When he leaves to find someone to give the boy painkillers, furious that they didn’t do it in the first place, his eyes are red again and he’s almost arrested. Almost. He keeps himself very, very still when he speaks, though, and when the nurses still look terrified he gives them money. Money makes most things go away. This time is no different. They accept it and agree to give the omega painkillers, tell him to wait while they administer them.

He asks about the restraints.

“It’s so he doesn’t pull on any of the wires,” the lady says. “Omegas spook easy."

“I wonder why that is?” Deadpool asks, sarcastic.

The lady shrugs, clearly uncomfortable talking to him.

Later, after the omega falls asleep, he bugs them again for wash cloths and warm water, spends half an hour cleaning the dirt and cum off him. They were going to do that later, they’d claimed. Assholes. But the omega sleeps through him running wash cloths over him, over all the places that aren’t already covered by bandages. Deadpool washes the kid’s face off and still he sleeps. He removes the restraints on his arms to clean under them and still he sleeps. Geez those pain meds must work like magic. Omegas _never_ sleep around Deadpool. _Nobody_ sleeps around Deadpool. Deadpool hardly even sleeps around himself. He’s kicking himself for not buying a blanket, because it’s fucking cold in here and they didn’t give him anything at all. They’d give him something if he asked, he’s sure. But he’s even more sure that if he talks to any of them again right now, someone’s going to end up dead and he’s going to end up in jail, so. Instead, Deadpool covers the omega’s feet with socks he’d bought and drapes the fluffy blue sweater he’d bought over the kid’s torso, trying to cover as much of him as possible. He’d dress him, except all the wires are in the way, so he drapes two more long-sleeved shirts over his legs, wraps him up like a pitiful little burrito.

He leaves the restraints off because fuck them all.

Hesitates for a second, then grabs the omega’s hand. Holds it.

[You are so screwed.]

[[You saw how scared he is, right? Of you? You’re kinda repulsive.]]

[You’re an alpha. He’s gonna wake up and kill himself on these wires trying to get away from you.]

[[Should probably restrain him again if you really wanna hold his hand.]]

[I mean, true. That’s the only way he’d let you do it.]

[[And did you notice that nurse’s bad attitude? I think she’s evil.]]

[Kill her!]

[[Kill them _all_.]]

For someone who’s got voices in his head constantly telling him to kill people, Deadpool can control himself surprisingly well. It’s because of his parents, probably. Those assholes. They only ever talked to him when they were yelling about how out of control he was, about how alphas aren’t good for anything. So now even when he kills people, he does it in control. He killed them the same way. Calm, collected. Slow, but always in control. Omegas aren’t what people tell them they are, and Deadpool likes to think he’s not what everyone tells him he is. Deadpool can totally be smart.

[You didn’t graduate, brah.]

[[Last week you stuck your finger in an electric socket.]]

“I did that on purpose,” Deadpool protests, whispering. The omega’s soft breaths remain even, steady. Okay so, sometimes he’s an idiot. It’s not because he’s an alpha, okay? It’s because he’s him. The distinction is important. And sure, he hasn’t met any intelligent alphas before, but for fairness’ sake, the only alphas he’s met were ones sent to kill him. Surely other alphas exist out there who get high school diplomas and know how to prepare their own taxes. They can’t all be idiots. Omegas aren’t just holes and alphas aren’t just violent lunatics.

And that’s that.

[Keep telling yourself that.]

[[Idiot.]]

[Violent lunatic who kills people.]

Deadpool groans. He plops his head onto the end of the table, still holding the omega’s hand in his gloved one, and starts counting backwards from 800. It usually quiets the boxes for a little while because they can’t count. And _they_ call _him_ an idiot. But because he hasn’t slept in a few days, and last night was spent sitting on the sidewalk hugging a bear and trying not to murder people, as soon as his head hits the table he can feel the exhaustion creeping up on him, can feel it dragging him under. The omega is safe, now. He can sleep.

He closes his eyes and does.

-

-

-

When Peter wakes up this time, everything hurts again. He feels like he needs to move but he’s too sore, ass on fire all over again, that painless cloud nothing more than a weird fever dream. He’s thirsty, God, his throat _aches_. Reflexively, he tries to bring his hand up to rub at his eyes, realizes he still can’t. Restrained, he thinks at first. But no, it’s – his hand is clutched by another, that alpha holding on for dear life. He’s – he seems to be sleeping, his head splayed out on the table beside Peter’s arm, the alpha half-hanging out of the chair and bent into a slumped position that looks too uncomfortable to contemplate. He’s been covered, too, by… shirts? His feet feel warm. But Peter’s other hand is free, the restraint hanging off the table, discarded. He rubs at his eyes and feels like crying.

He does cry, _is_ crying, can’t stop the tears if he wanted to –

It’s just all too much. He can move his hand, can rub his own eye, the alpha is holding his hand and sleeping in the room with him, he’s covered, _Peter_ fell asleep in the room with an unknown alpha, and now everything hurts again and he’s – he’s –

He’s broken, isn’t he?

It took a few years. But he’s – he’s _broken_.

He’s good at crying silently. He doesn’t cry often, but sometimes it’s all too much, and – but he’s good at doing it without anybody noticing. The alpha should have been none the wiser, too, but something wakes him up. Maybe Peter moved too much trying to get his hand free. Maybe he can smell the bitter salt in the air from his tears. Whatever the case, the alpha wakes, groans, lifts himself out of his slouch with a wince and a huge, back cracking stretch, all the while with his hand clamped onto Peter’s. Peter freezes, tries to stop his sniveling. Sniffs, rubs at his eyes, but it’s impossible. The big alpha sees him crying anyway. He freezes himself for a heartbeat, two, then drops Peter’s hand like a hot potato and scoots the chair away from the bed with loud, grating screeches against the floor. Peter turns his face away, tries to hide his crying, mumbling an apology because he’s pretty sure he’s not supposed to cry, pretty sure the alpha would rather see him grateful and thankful and _not_ crying like a weak omega bitch who doesn’t know how good he’s got it –

“’M sorry, shh, ‘m sorry,” the alpha’s saying.

Peter sniffles again, convinced he didn’t hear that right.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, baby boy,” the alpha says. He sounds remarkably earnest, but – but that can’t be right. “The nurses probably need to come check on you, it’s – I dunno how long we’ve been sleeping. Let me just – I’ll go check. Um. Brb!”

The chair screeches again as the alpha throws himself out of it, stumbles from the room. Peter isn’t given time to wonder about the strange behavior, because a nurse is coming through that door, followed closely by the alpha, who hovers awkwardly in the background while the lady works. She checks his I.V. drip before her eyes fall on the restraints or lack thereof, and then she’s rounding on the alpha and complaining, “I knew alphas were stupid, but you can’t just come in here and do whatever you want, there are _rules_ –”

“Excuse me,” the alphas interrupts. Peter’s never heard his voice sound so – rumbly. Dark. He flinches at the sound, sure that whatever’s about to happen, it’s not going to be good, heartrate kicking up because this is all his fault, please no, please – “But I’m paying you asshats a lot of fucking money right now, and you didn’t even give him a blanket! Or a sheet!”

“There are _rules_ –”

“Rules against _blankets_?” The alpha sounds aghast, utterly repulsed, his voice going up an octave as he throws his hands up and growls. Peter doesn’t even know what’s going on, now, what they’re even talking about anymore. Blankets? Why would they have given him a – but the alpha looks mad, his eyes sparking red. Peter cringes on the table and might whimper, his omega quaking at the sight, at the tension in the room, at the undeniable truth that he’s about to feel _pain_ , this is all his fault, this is –

“Shh, no, shh, sweetie, you’re okay.” The alpha is suddenly there, a hand petting his head.

Peter isn’t restrained, but he lays there and can’t make himself move anyway.

He’s just – frozen. In fear. In dread. Just – frozen.

He’s never seen alpha-red eyes before.

“Do what you need to do, doc,” the alpha murmurs, his voice whisper soft again. “He needs more pain meds, too. See the furrow?” And ridiculously enough, the alpha presses a finger to the furrow between Peter’s eyes, smoothing it out and letting out a giggled, “Boop!”

Peter blinks up at him, cross-eyed.

“I can’t work when you’re in here,” she complains.

“You can for thousands of dollars,” the alpha singsongs. His eyes aren’t red anymore.

The nurse must think thousands of dollars sounds reasonable, because she approaches the bed and gets to work. For the most part, Peter’s too busy focusing on the alpha standing over his head to pay attention to what she’s doing. His face is close at this angle, albeit upside down, but Peter can very clearly see how _damaged_ he is, the scars seeming to ripple and move over his skin. A scab on his chin is kind of just hanging there, ready to fall off. It should scare him. What could have happened to cause so much damage? Something gruesome. Something, maybe, like what Peter’s been dealing with for – for a long time. He must look bad, too, right now. Alphas don’t go through what Peter’s been dealing with, though. It had to have been something else. Something recent, if the open sores are anything to go by. But they do ripple. Peter focuses on one scar on the alpha’s cheek to be sure, watching it, and before his very eyes it moves like something’s crawling underneath.

He must have zoned out watching it, watching those scars, because next thing he knows he’s being shifted, pushed onto his side. He cries out in pain and fights against the nurse’s hands, whose grips are hard and rough against his back and thigh as she keeps trying to get him to roll over.

“You don’t want to do that.”

Peter freezes, chokes off a pained whimper.

But the nurse responds. The alpha must have been – must have been talking to the nurse.

Not him?

“He’s making this difficult when he fights,” the nurse says. She sounds as annoyed as ever.

“Okay,” the alpha drawls the word out ever so slowly. His hand is still on Peter’s head, one of them anyway. Soft pets, still. That low, growled tone must not have been directed at him. Still, Peter’s heart thunders in his chest. He feels like he can’t breathe. “So you were going to, what? Hit him? You think that’ll make it any easier for him to not be in pain? Because in case you hadn’t noticed, that’s the end game, here. No pain. Have you hit him before?”

Now she sounds flustered. “Omegas need correction –”

“You’ve hit him before.”

“I’ve corrected him when he needs correcting. Your omega is _useless_.”

“I’m giving you to the count of three to leave before _I_ _literally murder you_.”

Her hands fall away from his back and Peter’s back and ass hit the table hard. But while he’s crying, the lady’s retreating, saying, “This is why alphas should be locked up!”

“Oh, get over yourself!” the alpha yells back. “I’m still paying! Get me somebody who doesn’t hit half-dead people and tell them he still needs more pain meds! And a blanket! Damn, fuck, shit – shh, you’re gonna be okay, baby boy, ‘m sorry, I won’t hurt _you_. I really wanna murder that bitch but literally anybody else would want to do that, too, I swear I’m not – oh, c’mere, I gotcha, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

Peter is – so fucking broken, okay. He’s in too much pain to protest when the alpha scoots onto the table, scooches in and wraps an arm around him, hangs half off the table because they both can’t fit. Peter hides his face in that hoodie and scrambles to grab hold of it, still unrestrained, crying, white-hot pain from his ass falling on the table sparking behind closed eyelids. It hurts, oh, God, it’s worse than when he was raped one time after another, worse than those two betas entering him at the same time, worse than – worse than – please, no, _please_ –

“Shh, little omega, shh,” the alpha’s whispering, over and over. “Someone better’s gonna come help you, shh.”

 _But there is no one better_ , he wants to say. They’re _all_ like that. They’re _all_ –

He’s shivering. The alpha is warm against his side, but he’s – he’s cold. He’s so cold. His head feels heavy. Still the alpha whispers to him, his campfire-sharp scent overpowering all the betas that have been in here. He thinks the door might be opening, thinks he might hear that telltale creak.

He can’t be sure, though.

Peter passes out.


	3. are you real?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a graphic non-con scene in the middle of this chapter. Also, Harry Osborn is NOT a good guy in this fic. 
> 
> This update comes a week earlier than I'd planned because I can't seem to stop writing it. Your comments are so very much appreciated - even one little comment makes my whole entire day. You all are the best people in the entire world, you don't even know. 
> 
> ALSO - I'm getting awfully tired of them not knowing each other's names. Expect that to change next chapter. :)

3\. are you real?

-

-

-

He needs another surgery. It all happens fast, a whirlwind of activity from the moment he sagged unconscious against Wade’s chest. Deadpool notices the blood on the table pooling underneath the omega, and before he knows it, a gaggle of security guards are wrestling him away from the room and those fucking nurses are storming in to wheel the omega away. At least the one who’s apparently been _hitting him_ wasn’t one of those nurses. If she had been, nothing could have convinced Deadpool to let them take the omega away from his sight. He can’t trust what they’re doing to him behind closed doors, not a single one of these assholes.

“Are you sure he’s worth another surgery?”

Deadpool yanks the clipboard out of the doctor’s hand and signs the damn form.

“Just _fix him_.” Deadpool _aches_ for Bea and Arthur.

Still, the doctor hesitates. “You realize you won’t be able to use him, right?”

“Why are you still talking to me?” Deadpool throws his hands up. “Get in there and fix him!”

“For six to eight weeks _at the earliest_ ,” the doctor insists. He’s a portly man, a beta, short and stout like a teapot and about two seconds away from being strangled. Deadpool’s eyes are red again. He takes a clearly threatening step toward the white coat, who seems to tremble where he stands. But he’s cocky or stupid or both, because he swallows hard and squares his shoulders, a determined glint on his pudgy little face. He clutches his clipboard and tries to explain, all slow and pointed, “There are too many anal fissures to make him a viable hole for at least six to eight weeks. That’s six to eight weeks where he’ll need stool softeners, six to eight weeks with a mouth to feed that won’t be contributing at all to your household, six to eight weeks where if he’s not kept clean and unused, he’ll die anyway from infection –”

“What else do I need to sign?” Deadpool demands.

“N-nothing, no, but you need to understand –”

“I understand!”

“You’re an alpha! You clearly must not be understanding this. That omega in there won’t be of any use to you for –”

Deadpool likes to think he can control himself. But his omega’s been wheeled away with blood coming out of his ass, unconscious, by people who don’t even give a shit, and the words that he’s trying _very hard_ to speak aren’t being heard. Nothing he says is going to convince this surgeon to surgery. He’s signed the forms. He’s talked the talk. He’s been _patient_ and _tolerant_. But though he hates to admit it or claim it, in the end Deadpool _is,_ in fact, an alpha. He’s bigger and broader by design, he’s got alpha pheromones coming off him in pungent waves, and he’s _so_ _fucking_ _done_. The surgeon takes hasty steps backward and finally, _finally_ shuts his gob when Deadpool yanks his hood down and shows off his face, growls at him for good measure. The sight has the man stumbling into the wall behind him.

“Boo!” Deadpool crows into the sudden silence.

The surgeon jumps.

“Go fix my omega,” Deadpool says. He shoos him down the hall, following him as he stumbles away. “Go, go, go, go,” he says, all faux gentle, soft voice. He watches the man run away and imagines giving chase, imagines barreling him over and slamming his pudgy little face against the cold tile floor. Imagines a lot of other things, too. He’s killed a lot of betas, but Deadpool is _invested_ in ending this one. Later. When there aren’t any witnesses. After that omega finally gets to leave this fucking clinic. When he’s safe. If Deadpool gets arrested right now, there won’t be anyone around to make sure these asshats do their jobs. So, he’s controlled. He’s the patron saint of controlled. He’s so controlled that he returns to the omega’s room, sits himself down away from anyone he could potentially kill, and waits. And waits. And waits.

Waits some more.

He plays candy crush on his phone for a while.

He texts Weasel cat memes.

Texts Dopinder, who’s having a very nice vacation in the Bahamas.

He waits.

When the door opens and the omega is wheeled back into the room, he’s cuffed to the table again and unconscious. Deadpool uncuffs those restraints even before the last nurse has left the room, a big fat middle finger to their rules and their attitudes and their hatred. The lady stomps out of the door claiming she’s going to be telling her boss about this, but who really cares, right? What can they do, kick out the guy who’s giving them more money than they usually make in a year? Yeah right. But they’ve removed the shirts he’d wrapped the omega with and didn’t return them, and still no blanket or sheet or covering at all. Deadpool takes off his hoodie and drapes it over him instead, the chill in the air raising instant goosebumps as his arms are exposed. And the omegas in this whole clinic are apparently all naked in this icebox, _God fucking damnit_. The last thing he does is stick the fluffy rainbow bear he’d bought under one of the boy’s arms. It brightens the otherwise dismal scene, having that bear there amidst the bandages and wires and pale skin and bruises. He’s briefly worried that the bear smells too much like him, since he cuddled it all night, but that hardly matters now that the omega’s got his hoodie over him. Either way, his scent is all over the boy. Oops?

[I like it.]

[[Sameeeee… but _he_ won’t, will he?]]

[Oh, he’ll absolutely _hate_ it. Our scent is gross.]

[[Like a burnt corpse, isn’t it?]]

[Crispy.]

He’s not good at this. He’s good at killing the bad guys, but when it comes to the part after that, to the clinics and the waiting and the interactions with countless betas who suck ass in the bad way, when it comes to the part where the omegas cower and beg him not to come near them, to the fear and dread and terror stinking the place up, all those bad emotions directed at him… he isn’t so good at this part. He paces the room until the omega wakes up. Back and forth, wall to wall and back again, antsy and nervous and itching to run away from this place. But then how must the omega feel? To be trapped in this world with all these assholes, completely powerless and unable to escape anywhere? At least Deadpool gets to go _home_ after this.

The omega gets to – what? Go back to an auction house?

Would an auction house even take him right now?

 _He can’t be used for six to eight weeks at the earliest_ …

Shit. Shit, damn, _shit._

They won’t take him. And if the auction houses won’t take him, the brothels absolutely won’t.

He’s – he’s stuck with Deadpool, isn’t he?

[You didn’t think this through, clearly.]

[[He’d be better off dead.]]

[Betcha he _begs_ to be killed when he realizes he’s stuck with you.]

[[Should have let him die back in that alley.]]

[Instead you had to go and save him. HA! Like you could actually save somebody.]

[[Talk about being a dumb knothead.]]

[Dur dur dur.]

He’s talked himself into quite the bad brain day by the time the omega shifts on the table, groans a quiet little huffed breath as he rouses. Deadpool freezes for only a second, wide-eyed, heart in his throat. The boxes are right. They’re assholes but they’re _right_ , and – and then he rushes over, stumbles into the chair beside the boy, takes his hand and shushes the kid’s panic. He’s out of it, eyes glassy as they slow-blink open. Nothing says high on drugs like the way his hand curls into Deadpool’s and links their fingers. The omega’s grip is strong and tight right away, latching onto him, and Deadpool can feel himself freezing all over again. He stares down at their interlinked hands and kind of forgets to breathe. This is the second time this dude’s clung to him, and it’s – _addicting_. But his scent is all soured with fear and pain and clinic-misery. His other arm comes up in a panicked, aborted flail, stopping its trajectory as it comes into contact with the rainbow bear. Breathing hard, labored breaths, the omega cranes his neck to move his head off the table and look at the plushie. The hand that’s not curled into Deadpool’s curls into the bear’s fur and clenches.

They pause like that. The kid just – stares at the bear like it’s an alien.

Or like a creature from the black lagoon.

Something scary.

Deadpool gulps. He’s pretty sure he shouldn’t say anything the boxes are thinking right now. But he sucks at awkward silences even more than he sucks at waiting, and waiting for an awkward silence to go away on its own? _Impossible_. The omega’s eyes flick to him when his voice breaks as he hurries to explain, “There were other ones, but this one reminded me of you with its little button nose, and I figured if we were gonna have to stay at a clinic for any length of time, we’d need that cheery rainbow color to offset the sheer misery of this place.”

The omega won’t stop staring at him.

Deadpool fidgets. “Um – I named him Arnold.”

More staring.

And then, after frantic commentary from the boxes, Deadpool hurries to add, “But you can name him something else. I only named him because we cuddled last night, and I couldn’t cuddle him unless he had a name, that’d be rude, but then we – and you don’t – shit. He’s yours, if you want him. Name him anything! George? Harry? Or, like, a girl name works too. It’s not like he came with a preexisting gender, the lucky bastard. Maybe Molly? Mildred? Maggie? Some other name that starts with M?”

The omega’s voice is raspy, crackling like it hurts to talk. It’s a victory, though, that he seems to take pity on Deadpool’s mad rambling and finally says a hesitant, stilted, “Are you… real?”

Deadpool gasps. “Do you see things that aren’t real too??”

The omega jumps, flinches, apparently unaccustomed to Deadpool’s excitement.

“Sorry, I won’t – ‘m not gonna hurt you,” Deadpool says. He slumps, shoulders hunching.

In the face of the omega’s fear, he suddenly remembers that he isn’t wearing his hoodie. At all. It’s literally draped over the omega right now. He’s exposed under the ugly fluorescents of this damnably bright hospital room, a mere foot away from a terrorized omega who hasn’t let go of his hand, somehow, and his skin isn’t exactly happy to be here. He’s grotesque every day, sure, but today his skin is somehow worse than usual, all rippling and red and angry. More open wounds than usual, too. His bald head probably reflects the harsh light overhead like a mutant disco ball.

He suddenly can’t stand the omega’s eyes on him.

Those fearful, panicked eyes.

Deadpool’s sick of being scary.

“I’m just – the nurses! They need to know you’re awake. I’ll just – yeah.” He gestures out the door even as he disappears through it. What an awkward fucking _hell_ situation. It’s even worse when a nurse is in the room. Every time one of them comes in to change bandages or check vitals or administer pain meds or bring food, the whole atmosphere goes all tense and stilted, with Wade trying Very Hard not to go all red-eyes at their less-than-stellar bedside manners and the omega holding his breath and seemingly trying Very Hard not to move even a muscle until they leave the room. By the beginning of day three trapped in this hell dimension, Wade is ready to bounce. The omega’s been successfully removed from the catheter and can, with Wade’s help, very gingerly make it to the bathroom. He’s still taking round the clock pain meds and laying immobile as much as possible, but it doesn’t seem like they’re doing anything for him here that Wade can’t do for the boy at home. There’s no reason why they’re still here at all except that he can’t work up the courage to ask the boy to come home with him and the clinic likes taking his money. Not great reasons to belabor the inevitable.

The omega’s been sleeping off and on at all hours, obviously exhausted. Wade watches him sleep sometimes. Sounds creepy, but it’s comforting to watch the rise and fall of his chest under the cover of Wade’s hoodie, to hear the soft breaths of a relaxed rest that contrasts so painfully with how nervous and careful the omega acts any time he’s awake. Wade doesn’t sleep much, himself, too busy panicking internally at the fact that he’s somehow gotta convince this kid to come home with him or he might as well have died in that alleyway. And it’s – well, selfishly, Deadpool feels a little overwhelmed at the prospect of living with a terrified omega who hates him, okay? He’s never lived with a living, breathing embodiment of everything he hates about the world before. Home’s supposed to be the place he can pretend he’s not a scary, big ugly alpha. Now it’ll be all he can think about _24/7_. Every time the omega flinches or jumps, every time he looks down at his feet instead of making eye contact, every time he stutters or whines, those aborted pleas he starts and stops every time Wade gets too close – _shit_. It’s a lot to think about.

On the other hand, Deadpool kind of fucking _likes_ this kid.

He can’t even explain why. He obviously doesn’t know much about him. But over the past few days, Deadpool’s noticed that the omega’s sickly sour scent sometimes softens like a cool dewy morning before the break of dawn. Only ever when they’re alone, only ever for a few minutes at a time, but those few minutes of omega-soft almost-contentment? When they’re sitting, and Wade’s rambling about something random, and the omega’s been given his pain meds and he’s holding his rainbow bear, one hand petting through the bear’s fur while the other’s latched onto Wade’s hand… Wade’s never smelled anything like it, that earthy warmth that even overpowers Wade’s own grating, gross campfire stench. Maybe all omegas smell this – this _peaceful_ when they’re not scared for their lives. Deadpool wouldn’t know, since omegas are generally scared for their lives in his less-than-comforting alpha-strong-pungent presence. This omega is, too, a lot of the time. But those brief glimpses of the omega at rest? Those brief moments where the whole room floods with that omega-soft aroma?

Deadpool could get high off that smell and overdose on a smile.

Ooh, but that’d be the _best_ way to go.

Mostly, he wants the omega to smell content like that _all the time_.

It’s become a personal challenge, really. Best Ways to Make that Smell Come Back. So far, the simultaneous holding of the bear and Deadpool’s hand does the trick, sometimes, especially after a fresh dose of the pain meds. The first time he smelled it was after the nurses had unplugged most of the wires and gotten rid of the catheter, after they’d wheeled a wheelchair into the room and told the omega to use it to get himself to the bathroom down the hall. They’d left soon after, totally unhelpful wretches, the wheelchair left the furthest away from the omega’s table as it could possibly be. The omega had stared across the room at it, wide-eyed and frozen, sitting up on the table so stiff and uncomfortable, before stealing a few quick glances at Deadpool.

Wade, for his part, just looked wide-eyed back. “Can you even _stand_?” he’d asked, incredulous.

The omega sucked in a bracing breath. “I c-can – I’ll try to –”

“No, nope, no, let me _help_ –”

He’d wheeled the chair over to him, helped him off the table with the omega’s hand clutched onto one of his biceps as he stepped shaky feet onto the cold tiled floor. Once he was in the seat, finally, breathing hard and sweaty from that small accomplishment alone, Wade had grabbed his discarded hoodie off the table and held it out to the omega, who just sort of stared at it. Used to the staring at this point, Deadpool didn’t really mind it, although it did still make him want to duck and cover, to hide his skin from that sharp-alert gaze.

“No more wires,” Deadpool had said. “You can put it on for real now! If you want? Or I got – I think I got you at least one other shirt those nurse-assholes didn’t steal –” He’d moved toward the backpack, mumbling to himself, his hoodie reeking of that sickly sour omega fear. He both wanted to wear it to hide behind and not wear it because of the way that smell made him feel. Like a knothead. Like a brutish, violent alpha who cowed omegas in fragile states. A monster. Which he _was_. He was that, so it was fine, it was deserved that he felt like one –

“No, I –” the omega cut himself off, biting his lip. Deadpool froze in his tracks. The omega’s voice was still stilted, still hesitant, but he used it a little more each day around the alpha. He tried again, his hands clenched around the wheelchair arms so hard his knuckles were white. Brave little omega, to talk to an alpha who looked as horrifying as Wade did. To talk at all, in this world. Omegas don’t talk very often. Deadpool hangs onto every word the kid utters, all awed and grateful every time it happens. Has an omega ever said anything besides terrified pleading sobs to him before?

[Nope.]

[[Do blood-curdling screams count?]]

But this omega does. He’d steeled himself and said, “Please, I’ll – I want to wear it. If I – can I? I can wear it?”

Deadpool rushed to help him into the hoodie, to pull his arms into the sleeves and zip it over his wrapped torso. And it – he’s an alpha, okay? He doesn’t like it, but he is one. He’s got all that territorial bullshit hardwired into him. Seeing his hoodie on this omega, seeing the way it wraps around him and hangs off his smaller frame, it _does things_ to Wade. Makes him feel warm and dare he say _happy_? Is this what happiness feels like?? The omega hugged himself in the hoodie, arms wrapping around himself, eyes lighter and less terrified, if only for a moment. On a roll, Deadpool had gotten a pair of comfy black sweatpants out of the backpack and helped the omega into those as well, until at last the omega sat in that wheelchair clothed from the neck down in warm clothes, smelling of that earthy-rich chilly morning dew and looking for all the world like a real actual human being for once. And later, when they’d made it back to the room after an exhausting trip to the bathroom, after that smell was long gone and the omega’s pain was back, he’d laid flat on the table, bear in one arm, and grabbed Wade’s retreating hand and murmured, “Can I – can I keep wearing this?”

“Of course, baby boy,” Wade assured, disturbed that he thought he’d be required to strip all over again. He’d squeezed his hand. “That hoodie looks better on you anyway.”

“Are you real?” the omega had asked then.

The question’s come up a few times.

-

-

-

Peter feels like he’s dreaming.

He can’t tell he’s even awake, because everything’s all wrong and wonky and strange. For three days now, the big, intimidating alpha has stayed with him in the room. But he literally gave Peter the clothes off his back. It’s obvious he’s uncomfortable without the hoodie, but still he let Peter use it. He’s wearing nothing except a white V-neck that clings to his muscles, ripped and corded like a straight-up bodybuilder. It’d be terrifying how big the alpha is, except the way he carries himself is anything but, so careful and hunched, all fidgety like a flighty bird wanting to leap off into the sunset. He talks to Peter like he’s a person. Nobody’s spoken to him like he’s a person since his aunt and uncle, in _literal years_ , and it’s – jarring. _Extremely_ jarring. He lets the alpha’s voice wash over him sometimes and breaks a little more on the inside at the sound of it. To have something he never thought he’d have again, even for a moment… even knowing this can’t last, Peter breaks. The alpha doesn’t even mind it when he cries. And he does cry, seemingly without cause, randomly throughout the day. It feels like when he’s not sleeping, he’s crying, as silently as he can, soft snuffled breaths and tears trailing down his face. The alpha coos at him and pets his head and holds his hand and Peter _can’t_ _breathe_ –

It’s so bizarre how everything’s flipped.

Was it only a couple days ago that he dreaded this alpha coming into the room with him?

Now he – he’s scared when the alpha leaves. He pops out for a bathroom break or for a food run or to demand a nurse bring more pain meds, and Peter hardly breathes while he’s gone, frozen in dread and panic because what if the alpha doesn’t come back at all, what if he leaves and never comes back, or what if the nurses come in while the alpha’s gone –

Why does he feel safer when the alpha’s here?

It shouldn’t be this way. _Peter_ shouldn’t be this way. There has to be something fundamentally wrong with him, but he’s – he feels almost _real_ when the alpha’s around. Like he’s someone who can be talked to. Like he’s someone who can talk, who can cry or feel or _be_ , like he’s _real_. And of course this can’t last, which is – so terrifying it _aches_. The alpha’s been patient so far… more than patient. He’s been practically _kind_. He helps Peter to the bathroom ( _embarrassing_ ). He’s sung songs to him and told him stories about his life (none of which sound real) and read articles from his phone to him and gave him _clothes_ and a _teddy_ _bear_ and –

None of this feels real.

Any minute now, Peter’s going to be back in that crusty alleyway, whining under a stranger’s cock. Any minute now, he’s going to wake up alone in this clinic, naked and cold and too sore to move. Any minute now, he’s going to wake back up curled up in the kennel at his last owner’s house, to that old beta Frank kicking at the kennel and pissing on him through the bars. Peter’s not prepared to wake up. He’s not ready for reality to rip this kind alpha out from under him like he never even existed in the first place. He probably doesn’t exist. Everybody knows that alphas aren’t kind. This is a fever dream cooked up by the pain. He’s going to wake up soon and the bear will be gone and the clothes will be gone and this alpha’s soft, crooning voice and gentle hands will be _gone_ and no wonder he keeps crying, the wait for this all to poof out of existence will kill him if the pain doesn’t first –

He falls asleep after a nurse brings them dinner, bland, tasteless food but food nonetheless. He’s on a restricted diet, he knows, so they don’t bring the typical kibble omegas usually eat. The alpha helps him sit in the wheelchair to eat, a slightly more comfortable surface for his still raw, burning ass than the unforgiving, hard table. They gave the alpha the same bland food that they gave Peter, but the alpha doesn’t complain. It’s another point in the this-can’t-be-real column that the alpha eats with him and talks to him all the while, mouth full of food as he rambles and gesticulates and spills some down his white shirt. Everything about the alpha is unreal. Even a beta wouldn’t help Peter to the bathroom or give him clothes or eat with him like he’s a person. But an _alpha_?

Peter stops himself there. He can’t bear to think about the last alpha who used him.

He’s cried enough for one day.

But after they eat, the alpha helps Peter back onto the table, wordlessly hands him the rainbow bear and runs a scarred hand through Peter’s hair. He’d removed his gloves sometime when he’d removed the hoodie. Peter’s too scared to verbalize it, but he likes the feeling of that rough hand running over his scalp, sort of leans his head into the caress. If he’s dreaming, it’s a good dream. He should probably enjoy it while it’s happening, right? The alpha croons at him as he drifts off, that soft lilting baritone washing over him all over again. He doesn’t focus on the words, in and out on the sound itself.

But subconsciously, Peter must have been thinking about the last alpha he’d been around.

Or maybe trying too hard not to think about it.

Because one second he’s all omega-soft, drifting off under that campfire rich scent, and the next second he’s back there. Back in the lobby at Oscorp Tower, strapped into one of the stockades that lines the wall by the elevators. His arms and neck are restrained in the stockade, ass at waist level to anyone who wants it. His owner had given him something before leaving him there for the day, a pill that pooled heat low in his belly, that had his own penis stiff and angry, bobbing untouched in the chilly air-conditioned lobby. His hips sway as he whines, trying to thrust into nothing, thighs slick from the forced heat, hole achingly empty.

“In trouble again, Slick?”

He’s blindfolded, but he knows the voice of Harry Osborn by now, knows that sharp alpha scent that has his thighs clenching, that has him whining and thrusting his hips, desperate. The blindfold is wet with his tears, shame curling through him at the need that has him acting like an omega slut. Harry tsks close by, his breath hot against Peter’s ear right before a hand slaps down on Peter’s ass, stinging his already-sore flesh. He grunts out a gasped breath and wiggles, trying to chase that retreating hand with his ass, all slick-wet and tingling. The alpha laughs and slaps him again, a few more times until Peter’s pushing himself backward to take the punishing blows, hating the pain but _needing_ the contact.

“What’d you do this time, hm?”

Peter moans at another blow, grits his teeth

“C’mon Slick,” the alpha says. He hears a belt buckle jostling, the sound of a zipper, then the blunt tip of Harry’s cock as it slides over his slick and lands at his hole. It rests there, teasing at his opening, and Peter whines again, trying to impale himself backward onto it even as he _hates_ himself. “Tell me what you did to land yourself here again. What is this, the fourth time this month? Just look at you. Look at this _mess_. You’re a mess, Slick, you know that? Such a needy thing. What’d you do?”

Peter knows what’s coming. Hates it. The knot. The brutal, punishing pace. How the wood of the stockade scratches his wrists and neck until his skin bleeds, the way Harry _talks_. The onlookers in the lobby, their murmured judgements and their whistles and their laughter. He hates it, he hates it, he – oh, God, please, please fill him up, please –

The tip presses a bit. Only enough to tease. His hands clench into fists.

He feels – _empty_.

“I – I didn’t –” The tip bears down, barely breeching him. Peter chokes off a sob and keens.

“Keep going or I won’t.”

“Please, please – I didn’t, didn’t get hard when he – when my owner –”

“Course you didn’t get hard! That old beta couldn’t fill you like I do, hm? You need an alpha to knot you good, just look at you –” The alpha reaches under Peter and rubs a rough hand against Peter’s erection, grinding his palm on it so hard it _aches_ , makes Peter wail, trying desperately to follow that hand as it retreats. Then Harry laughs, slaps him on the ass, and slides home with one jabbing push. He talks when he fucks, monologuing a string of half-coherent dirty talk that Peter tries to block out. It doesn’t take much to focus less on the words whispered hot against his back and more on the huge alpha cock stabbing into him, filling him up, wet from Peter’s own slick. His cries fill the lobby, louder than anything Harry’s saying to him, so loud that the other omegas in stockades wince and cry with him. Alphas always fuck harder than betas, all rough punishing thrusts and slaps and – and Peter needs it right now, that ache like an unbearable itch inside him that even being filled can’t scratch. The pill keeps him right on the edge of release, utterly _incapable_ of achieving that release. He’s been left on the brink for hours, now, hours where he’s been fucked and laughed at and teased with little touches against his flank, with stinging slaps, with the brute force of wide belts and now, now –

Now Harry slows down, panting above him, that swell at the base of his cock catching onto Peter’s hole – catching until it, until it –

“Omega!”

Peter flies into motion, crying out as he whacks his arm against the alpha leering over him and bolts upright on the table, fighting now, fighting because he’s unbound and they can’t take him, they can’t –

“Shh, no, no, you’re okay,” the alpha’s saying.

And he looks – it’s not –

It’s not Harry Osborn. It’s the – he’s scarred. Bald. Big. It’s –

Peter’s eyes widen in horror even as he wheezes out a panicked breath and curls away from the looming alpha he’d literally just – he’d just _hit_. Peter _hit_ the man clear across the face with his entire arm, so hard there’s blood under his nose and – and he was _kind_ and Peter _hit_ him. He’s going to – he’s going to – “Please! I’m – I’m sorry, I wasn’t – I didn’t – please!”

Suddenly there’s a firm hand on his arm and an even firmer, _Alpha-_ barked, “ _Omega_.”

Peter freezes in place. Holds his breath, quelled into silence.

“Nobody is going to hurt you.” The alpha’s voice is all no-nonsense, dark and rumbly. Peter stares down at the scarred hand clenched around his arm and tries not to breathe, not to move. Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees that alpha-red again, those eyes glowing like hot coals. He trembles under that hand, heart racing. When the alpha’s voice breaks the tension, cuts through the silence, his tone is a touch softer but no less firm, no less rumbly. “I’m not going to hurt you. The nurses aren’t going to hurt you. Nobody, you hear me? _Nobody_. I’d hurt them first. I’d hurt _me_ before I’d hurt _you_.” And then softer still, on the edge of a croon: “You had a bad dream, sweetie. Yeah? ‘s just a dream. I’m going to let you go now and scoot my chair away and give you some space, okay? I promise you’re okay.”

The alpha – the alpha does exactly what he said he was going to do. He scoots his chair away, plops into it on the other side of the room. Peter watches him retreat with his heart in his throat. None of this makes sense. The dream made sense. That world – that world made sense. This world can’t be real; this alpha can’t be real, he’s –

“I’m sorry,” Peter says. He’s staring the alpha in the face, tracking the crooked nose and the blood and the smeared red where scabs used to be. His eyes are that soft, soft brown, not a hint of alpha in them.

The alpha grins, all teeth. Shoots him two thumbs up.

“You’re, like, super strong. Never be sorry for that, baby boy.” Then his eyes widen and he leans forward in his chair, sets a hand against his mouth and whispers like there’s anyone around who might be listening in, “Don’t tell, but I’ve got a healing factor. Watch, watch –”

He reaches up to his nose. Peter jumps at the sudden _snap_ that rings loud in the room.

His jaw drops.

The alpha sniffs, experimental. Grins again. “See? All better!”

“You – you just –”

“Yeah. Pretty rad, amirite?” Then a whispered, furious, “No _it is not gnarly_ –”

“You can heal?”

“Yep!”

“Are you…” Peter hesitates. But if literally hitting him in the face doesn’t send this alpha into a blind rage, then maybe he can – maybe he can speak. Maybe it’s okay to talk in this weird fever dream that isn’t ending. “… a mutant?”

“Eh, kinda?” The alpha leans back in the chair and shrugs. Doesn’t seem angry to have been asked a question. Peter is – Peter is suddenly _fascinated_. The alpha waves a dismissive hand in the air and says, “It was a whole thang. Wasn’t born with it or nothing. I don’t know all the semantics, but – um. I guess I’m mutated? Mutant-adjacent?”

He shrugs again.

“But then why…” He hesitates again, cuts off the question. It’s a bad question.

The alpha waves him on, though, prompting, “Why…?”

Peter steels himself. He’s already seen how sensitive the scars make the alpha. It’s a bad question. But he’s gotten this far. “Why don’t your scars heal?”

He’s braced for an outburst that never comes. Instead, the alpha picks at a scab on his cheek, glances away. “Right?? I’m stuck like this forever, unfortunately. I know it’s gross, but it’s not contagious or anything. The short and dry of it is that I got the cancer, got tortured a little until my cells mutated, wham bam thank you healing factor, which is now constantly fighting the cancer, and the fight just so happens to show up on my face. And everywhere else, honestly. It’s all over. Like, _all. Over_. But I’m – I don’t want to scare you. I know it scares you to look at me, but scaring you is honestly the _last thing_ I want to do. I usually cover them up. I mean, even at home, even when I’m alone, I cover them. You won’t have to, like, look at them all the time or anything.”

Then the alpha flinches, bolts upright from his slouched position in the chair.

Peter flinches at the sudden movement, too.

“Shit,” the alpha breathes. “Sorry, no, I’m not gonna go near you, I just – um. I just. About that whole home thing.”

Peter waits, perplexed. His heart races at the alpha’s sudden spike of anxiety.

What could be making an _alpha_ scared?

“I’m not sure how much about your condition you’ve heard, but the docs are saying you’ll need around six to eight weeks for your ass to fully heal? From the surgeries and the tears and shit. I was gonna –”

“My mouth,” Peter says. He wouldn’t interrupt an alpha on any other occasion, but he’s got an idea of where this conversation is going and he’s – he doesn’t want to wake up from this dream yet, please not yet –

The alpha’s voice trails off. His head cocks to the side.

“You can still – it’s not as good as having both, but you can still use my mouth,” Peter clarifies when it seems like the silence might stretch on forever. The alpha’s eyes widen. Desperate now, he clutches at the sleeves of the hoodie he’s been allowed to wear, and his vision goes all blurry with tears. There’s no reason why this alpha would keep him. Peter’s more than broken. He’s physically incapable of giving him what he wants. Six to eight weeks is a long time. Too long. It’s practically a death sentence to an omega. Would have been a death sentence to Peter, except for some reason the alpha’s paying to keep him around. He’s not sure how he feels about it all, can’t parse through the swell of so many emotions inside him right now. All he knows is he’s overwhelmed, confused, broken… and that he doesn’t want to die. Not yet. Not now. Having an alpha for an owner would have sounded like a nightmare before he’d met this one. It might still be a nightmare, if this is all some sort of elaborate act. But maybe it’s not all an act. Maybe this alpha is real. Maybe Peter can be a person again, sometimes, can wear clothes sometimes and talk sometimes and maybe even eat real human food, occasionally. There’s a chance this is all real and Peter’s – he’s so fucking frantic to hold onto that thin, frayed little bud of hope that’s blooming inside him.

There’s no reason the alpha might keep him, but – “I can make it good for you,” Peter insists at the alpha’s silence. “I can – I can still use my mouth, and my hands. I’d listen to you –”

“Stop.”

“I promise, I’ll do whatever you want,” Peter swears.

He hasn’t always obeyed owners. But for this chance, for this little sliver of hope –

But that little sliver of hope seems to be growing smaller by the second. Peter sees it all flash before his eyes as the alpha scrambles to a stand and beelines it for the door. He’s mumbling something to himself, too low for Peter to hear, but whatever he’s saying doesn’t matter because he’s leaving, he’s walking out, Peter played all his cards too soon and the alpha didn’t like it, doesn’t like what little Peter can offer him. He’s – he’s _leaving_ –

“Please!” Peter’s voice breaks.

The alpha’s face looks positively stricken when he glances over his shoulder at Peter, freezing for a moment with one foot out the door. He shakes his head and Peter’s heart is _breaking_ –

“I’ll be – I just need to –” the alpha stutters, gesturing madly out the door.

“I can be good –”

“You _are_ good,” the alpha hurries to say. “You’re fine, I just need to leave _right now_ – it’s me, it’s – you’re okay, I’ll be – I’ll be back.”

The door clicks shut behind him. Peter sits on the table and leans against the wall beside him. The abrupt silence rings in his ears like waves crashing over his head, the sudden emptiness of the room a stark, vivid picture of Peter’s entire life. It’s all empty and none of this was real, _he can’t breathe_ –

His hand feels around for the rainbow bear, finds it further down on the table. He clenches a fist into the bear’s fuzzy fur and brings it close to his face, nuzzles it. It still smells like the alpha, a faint whiff of fire and smoke. He doesn’t like the alpha, he doesn’t. He just – he wanted it all to be real. The clothes and the petting hand and the soft words and the conversation and listening when Peter spoke and – Peter hugs the ball of fluff to his chest –

– and cries.

Again.


	4. say my name

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for explicit non-con in the beginning of this chapter.
> 
> You guys. You're all so, so awesome. I wish I could just squish you all into big hugs. Your comments mean so much and make me smile even when I'm stressed the fuck out by my super stressful, nearly impossible job. I don't know why I thought it'd be a good idea to pursue a job where I have to lead hundreds of people and speak publicly all day every day. What sort of hell is this to a socially anxious introvert? Why did I do this to myself? Whyyyy?
> 
> Your comments make me smile. And that's - that's pretty damn special. Thank you for getting me through the hard days with smiles.

4\. say my name

-

-

-

Peter’s almost nervous to the point of throwing up. He _is_ nervous to the point of nausea, his stomach all in knots. The bathroom’s too far away, though, and he’s not sure he’s even allowed to wheel himself out of the room without permission. In any other clinic visit, he was expected to use a bucket in the corner of the room, but this room’s lacked a bucket from the start and the big alpha’s been helping him use an actual toilet. What’s the protocol when the alpha isn’t here? He holds the bear and tries deep, slow breaths, curled around the bright-colored ball of fluff. It’s so backwards, but he feels closer to a panic attack than he’s ever been before, wrapped in these borrowed clothes and hugging a stuffed animal, curled up on the table in this sterile, plain room. He’s not being beaten or raped or hit or degraded, but he’s – this isn’t – he’s _not okay_ –

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

Since the alpha left?

His concept of time is shaky on the best of days, when everything runs together in a string of pain and misery and more pain. But it feels like it’s been a while. Too long, maybe. Like maybe he won’t come back at all. Maybe he won’t. Peter can’t offer him anything. It’d make sense to cut his losses. What do they do with damaged male omegas? When a brothel won’t take him? Peter can’t imagine it’s anything good. He’s not sure how they kill worthless omegas, not sure how fast or slow it’ll be.

Should he try running?

Run where?

He can barely walk. It’s – it’s impossible. Hopeless.

He’s already dead anyway. What’s even the point?

The bear’s eyes are buttons sewed on with black threads. He fiddles with one of them, rotating it back and forth, back and forth, trying not to think. It’s hard not to think when he’s relatively pain free. This unbearable wait might have been easier if he hadn’t taken those pain meds earlier. It might have been –

The door swings wide.

Peter jumps, his heart in his throat, hands clenched in the bear’s fur.

He’s got another pitch. Prepared another angle that’ll make the alpha agree to take him.

But it’s – it’s not the alpha.

Instead, two orderlies file into the room. One has a big plastic bag full of stuff that he sets on the floor beside the alpha’s chair. The other one enters with a clipboard. He turns and shuts the door behind them. The click of the lock as the man’s finger presses it rings in Peter’s ears, makes his heart thump.

Peter can’t breathe. He feels like he can’t breathe. It’s – _he can’t breathe_ –

The one with the clipboard discards the paperwork on the chair.

“Stand up and bend over the table,” one of them says.

Peter doesn’t move.

They’re both wearing light green scrubs. He’s seen them around in the hallways, occasionally, over the past few days. They’ve kept a wide berth between them and the alpha, so they haven’t interacted at all with Peter up until now. Clearly impatient, the one closest to him grabs him by the arm and drags him off the table. Yanks the bear out of his arms and tosses it aside. It lands somewhere on the ground, but Peter can’t see where because his face is shoved onto the table with a rough hand pressing down on his neck. The other guy must have come closer to help; a sharp yank pulls his borrowed sweatpants down to his knees. With his chest pressed into the hard, unforgiving chill of the metal table, it’s even harder to breathe. Peter pants out panicked breaths, hands clenching onto the table and gripping hard.

A kick to his foot forces his legs open.

And this – the chill of the room, the pressure against him, manhandled like an object –

This is – familiar.

“What was that alpha thinking?”

“What, giving it clothes? Clearly alphas _don’t_ think. No wonder it didn’t listen to you. Betcha it thinks it’s a person, wearing clothes and getting babied by that freak.”

“You think you’re a person, omega?” The man’s hand grinds down into his neck, choking him.

“Is that it?” Another hand slaps down on his ass. The sting comes as a shock, abrupt and out of nowhere, and his ass isn’t anywhere near prepared to handle even one slap, because it sends jolts of sharp, stabbing pain into him. Peter whines, choking on a cry, clutching at the table for dear life. He’s suddenly sweating through the sweatshirt, feels sticky and disgusting. The alpha isn’t coming. He left him here to die, and now – _now_ – There’s laughter behind him, then the one holding him down leans close, breath hot against Peter’s ear, and commands, “Reach back and spread your hole.”

Shaking, Peter obeys. He pries his hands off the table and then scrambles to reach for his ass, spreading his cheeks until the cold air kisses his hole. It tries to clench and Peter moans out in pain at the position, the stretch almost unbearable, almost enough to make him let go of his buttocks and try to curl up in agony. He’s not close to healed internally, not close to prepped if they want to use him, he won’t survive this – and maybe this is how they kill omegas, maybe rape is the way they get rid of them – slow, slow death, a whore until his last breath –

They’re laughing again.

One presses a finger against him until his hole swallows the intrusion.

Peter’s panting, whining. “Pl-please –”

“You’ll take what you’re given,” the man snaps. The finger crooks inside him.

The other beta’s laughing still when he says, “Take it easy. If we pop a stitch –”

“Right.” The finger is yanked out of him, quick enough to hurt.

They pull him off the table and shove him onto his knees, where one of them feeds him his cock while the other whips his out and tugs on it, watching. Tears leak from the corner of Peter’s eyes and he gags on the penis as it shoves against the back of his throat. Still, his lips wrap around it like he was made for this, made to be on his knees, made to have his face pressed into a random stranger’s pubes as he services him, choking on a mouthful. And he – he _was_ made for this. The alpha was just a – just a fluke. A fever dream. He never actually existed in the first place. Peter hasn’t even been awake until now, until this very moment when he’s giving head to a beta. The other beta loses interest in watching. He shuffles forward and grabs Peter’s hand, pressing it onto his penis and forcing Peter’s fingers to close around it.

“Better get me off like this,” he says, and Peter moves his fist up and down. “Otherwise I might have to use that damaged hole after all.”

“Don’t know why anybody would want a male omega,” the one in his mouth grunts.

“One less hole than a chick.”

“Good enough for a back-alley whore, but to keep? Ha!”

“That alpha’s a fucking _idiot_.”

“This one won’t last the week, anyway. He was – nghh – leaking slick, a little –”

“Ooh, can you imagine what that alpha’ll do when it goes into heat?”

“That hole won’t survive a knot –”

The one in his mouth grabs handfuls of Peter’s hair and starts thrusting against his face. Peter gags and tries to relax his throat, tries to hold on for the ride, at the same time as he pumps his fist over the other beta’s cock and tries to keep rhythm, his knees groaning against the ground, pants pooled at his feet now. They’re still talking as they use him, casual conversation between pals, all laughing voices and mocking tones, but Peter’s having a hard time concentrating. Now that the betas pointed it out, his asshole does feel – wet. Moist. He’d thought it was blood from the beta crooking that finger into him before, from a stitch coming loose, but – but it’s _not_. It’s _slick_. Not much, not yet… but his body has apparently decided that this was the week, when he can’t be used, _out of all the weeks_ , to start a heat cycle. No wonder he feels sick to his stomach. His last natural heat was – he can’t even remember when it was. Months, years? He’s had so many heats forced on him that his cycle doesn’t know up from down. And now –

The betas are right. A heat right now will kill him. That alpha won’t be able to resist, and –

Wait.

The – the alpha!

The betas were – they talked as though the alpha might be taking him. The alpha’s a _fucking idiot_ for _keeping_ him, they said. Hadn’t they? Is he going to keep him? But then – where is he? Why’s Peter servicing these orderlies right now?

A warm gush of liquid hits the back of his throat, bitter and salty. Reflexively, Peter swallows.

After a few heartbeats, the other beta shoves his friend out of the way and cums into Peter’s mouth, too.

Afterward, the orderlies tuck themselves away. They leave without pulling Peter’s pants up or even getting him back onto the table. Just leave him kneeling, a rumpled mess in the middle of the room, drool on his face and a bad taste in his mouth. He kneels there for a few minutes, wide-eyed and panting, crying silent tears that drip off his chin. His heart feels like it’s beating out of his chest, his asshole clenching and slick, the chill of the room raising goosebumps on bare legs. It’s a slow, arduous process to crawl his way back to the table and pull himself up. The bear’s half under the table and he makes sure to grab him on the way up. He lays himself down on the table and, grunting from the effort, tugs one pant leg up at a time, shimmying back into the sweatpants even as the movement shoots pain through his ass, his vision blacking in and out of focus. Everything hurts, again, when he finally manages to lay flat with the bear hugged tight to his chest. It was a good reminder, he thinks. He needed it. Needed to be used. Needed to remember that that’s the way of the world. Teddy bears and warm clothes aren’t realistic. Soft words and gentle hands aren’t realistic. He can’t come to expect them. Not ever.

Whether the alpha comes back or he doesn’t, Peter won’t let himself forget that again.

Pain won’t kill him. But hope?

Hope _hurts_.

-

-

-

[[Stop freaking, we thought of everything!]]

[We didn’t clean the apartment!]

[[Okay but we _thought_ of cleaning the apartment.]]

[Thinking about it doesn’t hide all the guns! There’s a bazooka on the coffee table!]

[[Pretty sure we’ve got a bowl of grenades in the bathroom.]]

[It’s gonna scare him off! We’re scary! We gotta stop by the apartment and clean –]

[[It’ll take too long, bro. We’ve already been gone too long!]]

[Thirty more minutes won’t kill anybody –]

Deadpool decides he’s had enough of their bellyaching and informs them that if they don’t cease and desist, he’s going to start singing _Somewhere Over the Rainbow_. It doesn’t do anything to shut them up, of course, and White and Yellow continue their argument all the way back to the clinic, so loudly that Deadpool’s dulcet off-key rendition of their most hated song can’t break through their sound barrier. It’s fine, though, because Deadpool’s got his head in the game and he’s officially ready to be the proud new owner to a bouncing baby boy. Well, to a boy. A rape victim boy who’s terrified of him because he’s an ugly gross trash fire alpha. Whatevs. During the forced shopping trip, Wade’s discovered that he no longer gives a shit that the omega fears him. _Wade_ knows he won’t hurt the omega. Somewhere in the collar aisle, he realized that if he wants an omega to be safe, if he wants _this_ omega to be safe, then he’s going to have to buckle up and keep the kid safe. And who knows, maybe one day they could even be friends. Buddies. Ol’ pals. He might not be able to change anything about any part of this shit world, but he can offer up his safe little haven to someone else who has even more of a reason to hate the shit world. He’s – he’s excited, okay, this is going to be _great_.

[So says the guy who just sobbed for an hour in a dirty toilet stall.]

[[You hugged a toilet paper roll and rocked back and forth.]]

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Deadpool sings. People cross the street to avoid him, shielding their children as he passes on the sidewalk. He salutes them with his free finger and is even more eager to get home in the dusty darkness of the coming night, his nose sick of smelling that bitter beta stench that clogs up the world. At least he’s covered, now, having bought another hoodie first chance he got. This one’s got a furry rainbow mohawk going down the hood, glitter along the sleeves. He probably should have gone with another solid black one to avoid prying eyes, but shit, he needs some fucking color in his life, okay? People are going to stare whether he’s blacked out or wearing a fucking tutu, whether he’s fully covered or showing skin. Alphas smell like shit and he smells worse than most, so. If he wants to wear a glittery rainbow hoodie he’s going to wear a glittery rainbow hoodie. The omega likes the colorful bear; maybe the sight of Deadpool wearing this might soften the kid to him, maybe disarm all that pesky wariness his new unwitting omega’s got mucking up his scent all the time.

The clinic looks ominous as he approaches it.

Deadpool grips his bags, staring at the doors leading inside. He swallows.

[Chickenshit.]

[[I thought you were excited? Don’t tell me you were lying to yourself.]]

“I am!” he says. “Excited, I mean. Not lying to myself.”

[Right.]

[[Okay.]]

[Of course.]

The staff let him through without a word. With some scoffs and raised eyebrows, but without a word. Thank Christ for small favors. Deadpool’s good at not thinking – White and Yellow do enough of it for all of them – so he decidedly isn’t thinking when he bursts through his omega’s door with his bag full of goodies and deepens his voice as he exclaims, “Ho ho ho! This would have worked better if I’d gotten a red hoodie, but – hi! Again! Hi again!”

Wade waves.

The omega is laying down on the table, hugging his bear. The sight renews Deadpool’s resolve to see this through. The kid looks like shit. Adorable shit, granted. But still. He’s red-eyed and somber, hair all rumpled, face sallow and pale. And the whole room smells of fear and pain and sorrow, stifling, so bad it brings tears to Deadpool’s eyes. Christ, how can betas stand to smell this all the time and not try to fix it, to help, to soothe the omega into something less miserable? The omega jumped when the door burst wide but hasn’t made a move since, calm brown eyes tracking Wade as he dumps the bags of goodies onto the floor and digs through one of them, rummaging as he mutters to himself.

“Ah ha!” Deadpool brandishes a hairbrush, holding it up in triumph.

The omega seems to draw in on himself.

“My name is Wade Wilson, bee tee dubs,” Deadpool says into the silence. “I’ve been avoiding the whole name thing because I _literally hate_ that I’ve got a name and you probably don’t. It’s not cool. But we’re gonna be roomies, so. You can call me Wade? Or just, like, hey you. I also respond to Bea Arthur’s Beau or Bootilicious or Bob. Call me anything, it’s all fine.”

“M-mr. Wilson –”

“Eeeeeeeee,” Deadpool’s voice shrieks without his approval. The omega’s mouth clamps shut.

He hurries to say, “I did say to call me anything, sorry, that’s – that’s –”

[Go on, tell him he can call you _Mr. Wilson_.] White’s tone is goading.

[[Gag me, we’re gonna be reminded of our old man all the fucking time with that –]]

[Mr. Wilson, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Wilson.] White chants.

Deadpool winces. “Um, that’s fine. Mr. Wilson. Coooool. Awesome. Go on.”

“Um –” The omega looks uncertain. Bites his lip.

He hates himself for putting that uncertainty there over nothing. There’s a clipboard on the chair; Deadpool shoves the thing into the floor and plops himself down, groaning with his head in one hand, face hidden by the hoodie pulled low. He knows he’s already fucking everything up. He’s got to pull himself together, here. C’mon, Deadpool. Head in the fucking game –

“I don’t really like Mr. Wilson,” he admits. His head is still in his hand. “Lots of shit memories with that one. But I did say call me anything. If that’s what makes you comfortable then that’s totes fine, I’ll deal –”

“Wade.”

Deadpool freezes. Very slowly, he raises his face away from his hand, peeks over.

The omega’s eyes are wide. When he sees Deadpool looking, he says, “I can… call you that?”

[This one’s brave.] White coos.

[[Braver than dumbshit here.]]

[Unquestionably.]

“Oh absolutely,” Wade gushes, fast and frantic to reassure. “Not a lot of people even use my name, so it’s actually really great to hear it from somebody who’s not just a figment of my imagination. Not that the voices in my head ever use my name, either, the assholes… but yeah. Yes. Please call me that. If you want. I like it.”

[You are such a basket case.]

[[Overeager much?]]

“Do you have a name?” Deadpool asks. “Or something you like being called?”

The omega hesitates, arms tightening around his bear.

“It’s cool if you don’t,” he’s quick to add. It was a dumb question, and the misery on the boy’s face speaks volumes. Omegas don’t have names unless it’s something obscene or degrading. Even then, it changes owner to owner. Nothing that’s theirs. He taps the hairbrush on his leg in rhythm with his racing heart and says, “We can come up with something badass. Something you like. Not everyone gets to choose their own name, you know. I sure as shit didn’t… who’d pick _Wade_? At least mine isn’t a string of nonsensical vowel sounds, though. Parents these days name their kids some weird ass unpronounceable, unspellable shit. Pretty sure they use the button-mash-on-a-keyboard method and decide, you know, that looks just weird enough to get my kid confused with the sound a hacking cough makes. Or they’re named after rando household items and foods. I met a beta named Kale once. Kale! Like the salad! Poor bastard. I bet my life savings he croaks from a heart attack one day because he can’t stand to eat himself.”

As he speaks, he keeps tap, tap, tapping the brush against his leg.

The omega’s eyes seem to be drawn to the movement.

“Are you –” The omega starts, stops, all halted and unsure.

“I literally love hearing your voice,” Deadpool says into the silence. “You can ask questions.”

Still, it takes another false start before the omega takes a deep breath, releases it. Looks away and says a quiet, hesitant, “Are you going to – hit me with that? The – brush?”

“What!” Deadpool exclaims. The omega flinches at the outburst, looks scared.

[ _Asshole_. You are such –]

[[Fix this you fucking dickhe –]]

“I got this so we can get those knots out of your hair.” Deadpool has to speak through a sudden lump in his throat. He waves the brush in the air in front of him and gestures at the boy’s head, the boxes roaring in his mind. Very quietly, he can’t help but add, “I won’t hit you _ever_. I know that probably sounds unbelievable and I know you can’t trust me and I know I’m scary, but – I mean it, baby boy. I’m not going to hit you _ever_.”

He’s pretty sure the omega doesn’t believe him, if the disbelief painted across his pale face is anything to go by. But he does give his permission for Deadpool to approach with the brush. The alpha helps him sit up on the table crisscross applesauce style so he can work the brush through his matted, knotted hair, starting at the bottom and going slow. A lot of owners opt to keep their male omegas shaved. It’s cleaner, that way. Less maintenance. Others find the act of shaving an omega’s head work in and of itself and don’t bother. They leave their hair in utter disarray. Who cares if an omega’s hair knots itself into a rat’s nest, greasy and matted with crusted cum? Omegas already carry that bitter, pungent stench of fear and hopelessness around with them, so their hair smelling bad makes little difference. It doesn’t impact their ability to serve, so – but Deadpool’s been plucking at the kid’s hair for days now, trying to very slowly pick through each knot. He’s been dying to get his hands on a brush. In the quiet of the uncomfortable little white room, he keeps talking while he works, murmuring different name options for the omega and running through pros and cons of each possible name.

The omega sits stiff and still, his head bowed so Deadpool can get at the knots at the back.

He says nothing.

Good thing Deadpool’s used to talking to himself.

[He looks like a Tom. Suggest Tom.]

[[Nah, he’s definitely an Andrew. Drew for short!]]

[Tom!]

[[Andrew!]]

[Ask him which one he likes better. It’s gonna be Tom –]

[[It’s gonna be Andrew.]]

Deadpool pauses the brush on a rough patch of hair, smoothing through it with his fingers so it won’t tug too hard. The omega remains ramrod straight and still. “Here’s a thought,” Deadpool says, both to the omega and to his pesky boxes. “But what about Tobey? It’s got that cute ring, you know. You kind of look like a Tobey. Also, I’ve never met a single asshole Tobey. They’re all complete _dolls_. Granted, I’ve only ever met nice people in alternate realities, so none of my Tobey references come from this dimension, but Tobeys are usually hella friendly as long as they aren’t from around here. Because everybody from around here is an asshole. It’s almost like there’s something in the water here, amirite? Must be why I’m such a joy to be around; I never drink the water.”

[Tobey is fucking lame.]

[[No way he’s a Tobey. Tell him my idea! Tell him Andrew!]]

[Tom!]

“It’s all mellow yellow and Canada dry for me,” Deadpool keeps talking.

The omega never speaks up about any of the name choices, never says anything at all about it. He does, however, point out the clipboard with paperwork Deadpool might need to sign, tells him that a couple orderlies came around earlier to drop it off along with that bag of stuff that’s beside the chair. It’s off, something in the omega’s voice. Something a little dead. Flat. Wade doesn’t always get subtleties, but he’s so hyper focused anytime he gets to hear this omega talk that it’s hard not to pick up on the strain in the kid’s voice. It’s discharge paperwork, of course. Because Deadpool is taking the kid home and that’s that. It’s the only option. Maybe that’s what’s off. Maybe the thought of going home with Deadpool is what’s making him sound so dead inside. It’s probably – of course that’s what it is. Nobody sane would ever want to come home with Deadpool. Deadpool doesn’t even want to go home with himself.

But it’s what they’ve got. It’s all they’ve got.

“Hey, are you okay?” Deadpool asks, pausing on a tangle. Another stupid question.

The omega’s shoulders tense, rounding forward.

“I know you don’t exactly have the pick of the litter here. It sucks, I know it all sucks, but I can –I can be a good roomie. I’ll wear my hoodies so you won’t have to look at all the gross shit, and I can cook a mean lasagna. I’ve got two bedrooms so you can have your own, after I clean one of them out because it’s super disgusting right now, but. I mean, I’ll take the gross one, of course. I earned that mess. And I’ve already got loads of ideas on shows we can watch and I don’t know about you, but hiding away from the world and just – resting? Sounds good right about now. My alpha stench is hard to stomach sometimes, but there’s windows we can use to air the place out. But if you’d rather not come home with me –” Here Deadpool falters. What can he possibly offer as an alternative?

But a hand comes up and grips Deadpool by the wrist, latching onto him with a sudden fervor.

The omega’s hand is trembling, clammy.

“Please,” his voice is a whisper, head still bowed. “Please, _please_ take me with you.”

Deadpool swallows, struck speechless. The boxes fall quiet.

“I want – _please_."

“Yeah,” Deadpool’s voice is gruff. He clears his throat, pats the hand that’s holding his wrist in a vice grip. The omega’s fingers clench, gripping onto his hoodie sleeve. The brush is stuck on a knot, so he gently pulls it out of the omega’s hair, using his fingers to pick at the strands holding it in place. He sets the brush down on the chair and turns his other hand, slides it so he can link their fingers together. He hasn’t held hands with someone like this before, not ever. They’ve held hands so often over the past few days that it’s almost natural, now, the weight of the omega against his palm a calming, anchoring pressure. Now that he’s standing beside instead of behind him, they can meet each other’s eyes. Even that should feel strange. People don’t often meet the eyes of an alpha, especially not Deadpool. They’re both a little watery. He says as earnestly as he can through the lump in his throat, “Course I’m gonna take you with me. It’ll be great! I even bought – I mean I fucking hated that I needed to, but the nurse said they wouldn’t discharge you to me unless I did, so I had to go buy a – shit, let me show you.”

From one of the bags, he pulls out a collar.

The omega’s eyes are wide and shocked as he brings it to the table. Their hands latch back onto each other on autopilot, but the omega’s eyes never leave the collar as Deadpool holds it up in between them.

“It took a while to pick one out,” Deadpool explains, awkward and big. The collar feels weighty in his hand despite the fact that it’s the most comfortable one he could find. He tried it on his own neck at the store in the middle of the aisle to see, tested out dozens of different materials and brands. Almost got kicked out of the place because apparently seeing an alpha trying on collars scared the customers. Whatever. This one was the best, though. A dark blue nylon, lined on the inside with soft sheepskin leather. Extra breathable with notches to adjust the fit and tightness, and the brass d-ring in the center for the leash is lightweight, too. Collars aren’t overly common for omegas; it denotes some level of commitment that most owners don’t have toward what they consider a piece of property. Leashes are required, however, and it’s much less miserable to attach a leash to a collar than it is to wrap a chain around an omega’s neck and pull them along. At least a collar evenly distributes the pressure.

“I had to get a fucking leash,” Deadpool says, scowling down at the collar. “Someone noticed I didn’t bring you in with one. I never bring any omegas in with one unless I just happened to find them with one already around their necks, but I’ve never tried to bring anyone home with me, either. I guess I didn’t realize how serious this place was about their compliance with leash laws. It’s all fucking ridiculous and – but I mean. I figured this might help make it more comfortable? It feels good against your neck. And I won’t be leading you along with it. _Fuck_ _that_. You’ll be in the wheelchair anyway. Besides, the law doesn’t say anything about who’s got to hold the end of the leash. You can just walk yourself.”

“Can I –?”

Deadpool holds it out to him. “Course. It’s yours.”

He can’t read the expression on the omega’s face as he reaches out a slow hand for the collar. He lets go of Wade’s hand to take the collar into both of his, his bear dropping to the table as he runs his thumbs over the padded leather interior.

“You got me a collar?”

Deadpool fidgets in place. “It’s more comfortable than just a leash.”

“You’re going to –” He cuts himself off again, hesitant.

That’s going to get old fast. “You can ask me questions,” Deadpool says again.

He’s frowning, eyes all sad. “I’ve never had a collar before. None of my other owners…”

He shakes his head, then looks up at Deadpool. Says, “Thank you. Wade.”

The gratitude sounds genuine, bright, as the omega’s scent smooths and softens into something less despairing. This world sucks. It sucks that a person is thanking him for getting a collar and leash that he’s forced to wear in public. It sucks that if they ever do go out anywhere, he’ll be expected to use the leash to tie the kid to a hitching post on the sidewalk. It sucks that Deadpool has to own somebody just to protect them. The gratitude sounds genuine, but it stabs straight through Deadpool’s cold dead heart. He doesn’t want this life. The omega doesn’t deserve it. Brave, brave omega. Using his name. Talking to him. Deadpool wasn’t lying when he said that nobody calls him by his name. Betas call him _alpha_ , their tones all dismissive, lips curled up. Weasel and a few other friends call him Wade, but never an omega. It’s – _fucking brave_.

While he’s turning the collar over in his hands, Deadpool picks up the clipboard.

For better or for worse, it’s time to blow this popsicle stand.

“Wade?”

The omega mutters it, whisper soft and tired. Deadpool thinks he could get used to his name, thinks of how dangerous that thought is. “Yeah, baby boy?”

“I do have a name.”

Deadpool perks up, pen scritch-scratching a random line as he stops writing and freezes. “You do? Do you want me to know it? I’ll use it, if you tell it to me. Promise.”

[I bet it’s Tom!]

[[How does he have a name? That’s weird, isn’t it?]]

[Maybe he gave it to himself. Or had progressive parents? Super progressive?]

[[He’s unusually brave around us, too. Like, stupid brave.]] There’s suspicion in Yellow’s voice.

[What, you think he’s from the Resistance? Give me a break.]

[[It’s totally possible! You think it’s impossible?]]

[He was almost dead when we found him.] White’s reminder is sobering. [If he was from the Resistance, they did our boy wrong.]

[[… I bet his name is Andrew.]]

[Tom!]

The omega seems to be thinking. It’s quiet for a minute or so while he fiddles with the d-ring on the collar, looping a finger into it and twirling it around. He doesn’t look at Deadpool, head low and eyes down, looking all tiny in that oversized hoodie, his hair still a mess. It’ll take a while to work through all those tangles. A bath will help. Warm water and soap. It turns out that dried and crusted cum makes for a shitty conditioner. Eventually, Deadpool returns to scratching the pen against the clipboard, penmanship almost illegible through his rushing to get it all finished. It’s not like it says anything important anyway. Not liable if the omega dies, last known STD, blah blah, sign here blah. Inside the bag the orderlies left, Deadpool finds the prescriptions he’ll need, extra bandages to change out at the site of the surgery, that cream they’ve been inserting into his ass every night. If the omega can’t do that by himself, Deadpool’s going to have to. Not that he minds doing it, he’ll totally be the best nurse in all the land, but – but the omega won’t like it, an alpha that close to his ass. What a fucking mess.

He’s still rummaging through the bag when the omega clears his throat.

Deadpool looks up, glancing over at him.

“It’s Peter.” He sucks in a breath as soon as he says it. His shoulders tense up, his hands gripped tight around the collar he’s still fiddling with. When Deadpool says nothing for one heartbeat, two, he says it a little louder. “I have a name, and it’s Peter.”

[Awwww]

[[Why didn’t we guess that? It’s perfect!]]

Deadpool scrambles to a stand, drops the medical supplies he’s been pilfering through. He wipes a sweaty hand on his sweatpants and holds it out toward the omega, who eyes it like it’s a snake that might bite him on the nose. They pause like that for an awkward amount of time, until Peter seems to come to the conclusion that it won’t, in fact, bite him, and grabs Deadpool’s hand into one of his own. Instead of shaking hands like Deadpool expected, Peter links their fingers again and holds on. Deadpool’s insides all sort of melt at the contact, at the soft sweet scent that fills the room.

He thinks he might be grinning when he says, “Nice to meetcha, Peter.”

And Peter, brave little omega –

Peter’s mouth quirks up, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 9/29/2020 - My grandfather died. It was traumatic. My grandma woke me up screaming his name, so I immediately got her out of the room, called 911, and started chest compressions. I did them for 20 minutes until paramedics arrived, but it was too late. He died peacefully in his sleep.
> 
> But my family is a mess. I'm a mess. Can't sleep because I keep hearing Nanny screaming his name. Or I see him under my hands as I'm trying to bring him back. 
> 
> 11/14/2020 UPDATE:  
> I moved. My grandma moved in with me. We've been so busy moving and trying to get her house ready to sell that it's been exhausting. But I'm hoping to get back into writing this story starting next week. Thank you for all the kind comments and for your patience. And so this life goes on, ad nauseum. 
> 
> I am so tired. Can't wait to get back into this story. I miss it.


	5. numb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your kind words and encouragements. It's been a really bad few months. Trying to ease back into writing, hoping it's not all different now that I feel like a changed person. Hoping I can still write on the other side of death.
> 
> I can't thank you commenters enough <3

5\. numb

-

-

-

They take a quick bathroom break before they check out because it’s been hours since their last one, and Peter didn’t think he was allowed to go on his own. To be fair, he’s probably right. It’s not like they give omegas blankets or clothes or any other sort of basic common decency here. Knowing all that, Deadpool feels like a fucking idiot to have expected his omega to have been able to piss when he needed to piss. Despite the fact that they’re both low on the societal totem pole, they come from two completely different worlds. Deadpool gets to do things. He comes from a world where he’s ignored and ostracized, sure, but he takes for granted the privilege he has in all the other ways, all the other millions of little ways he never stops to consider. He can pee when he wants to pee. He can grab a burger or go shopping or pop into the corner store for some spicy hot chips and a lemonade. People don’t hurt him. If he had any hair to brush, he could have brushed it. He can take all the showers he wants. On bad brain days when the world’s too much and he’s a depressed, unresponsive lump on the couch, he gets to be a depressed, unresponsive lump on the couch. Peter doesn’t get any of that.

He doesn’t even have control over his own basic bodily functions.

It’s – fucking _maddening_.

So they go to the bathroom, Deadpool wheeling him down and helping him on the toilet. He tries to make it as normal an experience as possible by babbling the whole time about random shit. Jury’s still out on whether or not that helps. Most likely, nothing helps. When that’s done, Peter holds the collar out that he’s been clutching in a white-knuckled grip, holds it out to Deadpool, eyes down.

“You sure you wanna wear it?” Deadpool checks, hesitating. He doesn’t like it when Peter’s eyes are all downcast. Doesn’t like the stiff shoulders, the held breaths. And Peter’s hand is trembly, a bit, where it holds the collar out to him.

It was a dumb question, though. Of course, he doesn’t _want_ to wear it.

Peter’s head jerks up at it, eyes widening. “Y-you don’t w-want–”

“No, nope, no,” Deadpool rushes out all at once, scrambling to grab the collar and decidedly ignoring the way Peter flinches back, the way he tries to melt into the wheelchair and away from Deadpool. “I want you with me,” Deadpool says, also decidedly. “It was a dumb thing to ask, I’m not good at this. I just – I just hate this whole thing. Not the – not _you_. You’re great! Just – I’ll stop talking now. Can I?” He shakes the collar out in front of him. Peter gives a careful nod and tilts his head to the side, exposing his neck. He waits there, very still, once again seeming to hold his breath. Come to find out, Deadpool’s hands are shaking a little, too, when he very slowly wraps the collar around Peter’s neck, has a hell of a time buckling the clasp. Once it’s there, though, it’s – it’s a hell of a thing, but as Deadpool fits the leash through the collar loop and hands the chain off to Peter, something inside him can’t help but settle into place. His boxes quiet down, his heart slowing. On a very visceral level, it feels like somebody is _his_ , now. It feels _permanent_. He hates this, he knows he hates it, but at the same time… that’s _his_ collar. Around Peter’s neck. Peter who accepted it readily, who bared his neck for him, who’s holding his own leash in two slack hands and eyeing it like it’s the craziest thing he’s ever seen, all wide-eyed wonder. A brave, totally adorable omega accepted a collar from the ugliest, gnarliest, least attractive alpha to have ever alpha’d.

It fills Deadpool all the way up with determination to make sure Peter never regrets it.

-

-

-

Peter feels braced for something horrible.

And really, he’s overdue for something horrible. It’s been days at the clinic, literal days, and the most horrible thing he’s had to deal with were a few grumpy nurses and a blowjob or two with some orderlies. Meanwhile, the most unreal alpha in the world’s been singing to him and talking to him and petting his head and brushing his hair and he’s wearing _real clothes_ and the _collar_ –

Swallowing, he reaches up and fiddles with it. Runs trembly fingertips over the soft, cool nylon.

A _collar_.

If he were a person, being collared should have made him feel – degraded. Owned. Outraged.

But he’s not a person, is he? Not anymore, if ever at all.

Maybe it’s hardwired in an omega’s brain, this floaty-sweet feeling of _safe_ as soon as the collar closed around his neck. Maybe he can’t escape his biological weaknesses. A collar doesn’t mean safe. Shouldn’t. He’s never been gifted a collar before, but he imagines that if any of his other owners had given him one, it would have felt stifling, itchy, weighty, _wrong_. But this one, given by this alpha…

He shouldn’t like this alpha.

He shouldn’t.

He doesn’t know him at all. Apparently all it takes is a few sweet words and some clothes, and Peter’s omega is ready to leap into bed with a big, scary stranger, ready to follow at his heel like a dog seeking out scraps. If only his other owners had known that.

But still, even as Peter hates himself for it, he feels – safe. More grounded.

Wade’s behind the wheelchair pushing him across the concrete as they walk, his usual lively fidgeting all quiet and cut off, hunched shoulders as he hides behind his rainbow hoodie. It’s understandable why he’s being quiet, why he’s trying to hide, because there hasn’t been a single person who’s not stopped to stare at them as they passed. Peter’s used to being stared at, gawked at, sure, but these stares feel different from the typical lustful-greedy-appraising ones he usually gets. These stares feel like judgement, like hatred, like – _revulsion_. And either they don’t care how loud they’re being or Peter can suddenly hear better than he could have before, because he can hear their whispers long after they’ve passed, can feel the disgust in their voices, can smell it in the air. People give them a wide berth and still he can hear them, smell their twisted emotions, feel their stares. He wonders if Wade can, too.

Peter keeps his eyes on the sidewalk, trying to ignore them.

Counts the cracks as they roll over them.

Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight -

_“The hell kind of freakshow is that?”_

_“Is that omega wearing clothes?”_

_“That’s an omega, right? Why is it wearing –”_

_“Did you get a whiff of that alpha? Talk about a stench –”_

_“I’ve seen that alpha before! He’s got the ugliest face, I’m not joking, it’s –”_

_“What do you think that alpha did to that omega? It smells sick –”_

Forty-three, forty-four, forty-five –

_“Not sure why we let alphas walk free like that, just look at him –”_

_“Ugliest motherfucker, it made me throw up one time, you should see its face –”_

_“Thank God it’s covering that up –”_

_“I don’t know, I feel a little sorry for –”_

Finally, they approach a towering brick building with graffiti tagged on the side and bars on all the windows. They’re both silent in the elevator, a musky cramped box that jolts at every floor, each jolt sending spikes of pain shooting through Peter’s ass. It’s pretty easy to ignore the pain, though, through the sheer terror that’s gripped him the closer they’ve gotten to Wade’s home. A few seconds from now, they’ll be alone behind closed doors. A few seconds from now, he’ll be alone with an alpha. They’ve been alone before, but that was at the clinic. That was where there were other people who could walk in at any moment. Maybe Wade will be kind again, but he’s an _alpha_ , and Peter’s omega _trusts_ him, and that’s – that’s scarier than anything he’s ever gone through. At least he never _trusted_ any of his other owners. Trust is so easily shattered, especially base instinct trust formed over a tentative few days, and his heat’s going to hit soon and if this moment when they enter the secluded house of an alpha doesn’t shatter his omega’s trust, then the heat cycle will. Either way, nothing that happens in this apartment is going to be good. His heart’s thumping fast in his chest and he feels like he might come apart all over, like he could shake out of his skin. The elevator doors jerk open on the eighth floor, the ding ringing loudly from the cavern of Peter’s tunnel vision.

He wants to run and hide.

Wade wheels him down the dim hallway with its chipped paint and its musky brown carpet, wheels him all the way to the end, where he stops them in front of a door marked 8A. Peter stares up at the door and tries to will his heart to stop beating so wildly, tries to breathe despite how his body instinctively wants to freeze up. Nothing behind this door can be any scarier than anything else he’s had to do in this world, he tries to remind himself. If anything, it’ll be more of the same. Always more of the same. One hand clenched in the fur of the bear he’d been given, his other hand white-knuckled on the chain of his own leash, Peter tries to remind himself of all the good things this alpha has done. Wade gave him this teddy bear, and these clothes, and his own collar. He’s holding his own leash. Why would the alpha have done any of this if he were going to turn around and take it all away the moment they were finally alone in his apartment? Why do any of this at all if he were going to – going to –

“Um, I just need to – I gotta – wait right here!” Wade says, then, the first thing he’s said since they left the clinic.

Peter watches Wade unlock the door. Watches as the big man shimmies through the cracked door, refusing to open it all the way. Watches as he clicks it shut behind him. He leaves Peter sitting in the hallway.

There’s a flurry of motion on the other side of the door, bangs and shuffling.

Wade’s mumbling to himself, muffled words that are hard to hear through the door.

More bangs, things clattering, the sound of something scraping against the floor.

The whirr of a vacuum startles Peter into a flinch.

Is the alpha – cleaning?

He sits in the hallway for what feels like a long time, listening to the strange chaos happening inside the apartment. At last, the doorknob is jangling and then the door’s jerking open. Wade skips out and rushes to wheel him inside, his mouth moving a mile a minute about how he’s going to be a clean roomie, no worries, and that he didn’t even know he owned a vacuum until just now but don’t let that scare you, he’ll totally use it more than once a decade now that he knows he had it. The door is kicked shut behind them and then Peter’s inside, officially inside and alone with the alpha, who can and will do to Peter anything he wants to do.

Apparently, what he wants to do to Peter right now is feed him.

He wheels Peter over to a window in the living room, parking the wheelchair beside it. The window’s open and the sounds from the street below help drown out Peter’s terror, who feels suddenly very drained. It’s hard to maintain fear for long stretches of time, and Wade will do what he likes either way.

“I’ll give you the grand tour after we eat,” Wade says, puttering around in the kitchen behind Peter, who’s staring out the window and hugging his bear. “I did a quick sweep of what’ll be your room, but I don’t have any air fresheners right now and it still smells like – um, me. Which, yikes. You’ll probably want the window seat for a while, sorry, I know this whole place reeks – I’m here a lot. Like all the time? Most of the time. Everywhere else on this shit earth is pretty shit, but it’s nice and quiet in here. You wanna watch tv while I cook?” Peter hasn’t watched tv in a long time, doesn’t think he can stomach doing so now. It’d feel too much like – what? Like May and Ben’s house? Like he’s normal? But it seems like Wade is waiting for an answer, like he actually asked Peter a real question that requires a real answer, so Peter shakes his head, wordless.

It’s strange that that seems to work. Wade resumes his talking.

“Not that heating up canned soup counts as cooking, but it works in a pinch. We can get a grocery order delivered tomorrow. I know you’ve got to watch what you eat for a while, but I’ll buy everything on your approved foods list and we can just go to town with it all. Liquid food diets for the win – like seriously, it saves so much time on chewing.”

Peter lets the words wash over him, too overwhelmed to try and talk back.

Wade seems – he seems the same.

In the seclusion of being completely alone with an omega, Wade still seems – the same.

Babbling, talking to Peter, expecting answers. It’s like nothing’s changed.

He’s still wearing clothes. Still holding his bear. _The_ bear.

Peter’s braced for something horrible. Instead, Wade turns his wheelchair around so that he’s facing the living room instead of the window. He hands him a bowl of yellow soup with little skinny noodles floating around in it, tiny chunks of chicken intermixed. Then Wade gets one bowl, too, and plops down on a wide mustard yellow couch. The cushions sag under his weight, worn down and frayed, and Peter sits there while Wade eats thinking that this can’t possibly be what’s happening right now. None of this feels real. He’s dreaming, and he’ll wake up any minute now back in that alley sucking on cock, stuffed full of it. But the bowl is so warm in his hands, steam rising from it and warming his face. There’s a spoon set in the bowl, like he’s allowed to use one. When’s the last time he’s eaten with a spoon? He shouldn’t let his mind go there. Wordless, Peter picks the spoon up with a trembling hand and takes a bite. Canned soup has never tasted this good, the glide of the warm broth soothing his churning stomach. Any minute now this will all be gone. His heat will hit full force, and it’ll all be over. Wade might seem like a saint right now, but he’s an alpha. Faced with an omega in heat, writhing and begging for it, he’s going to do what every other alpha would do. And Peter won’t – he won’t survive it. Not like this.

One thing at a time.

He takes another bite of the soup.

-

-

-

He’s asleep.

Deep down, Peter knows he’s _not_ asleep. He knows that when he’s going through motions, he’s doing them all in real time. But his body and his brain feel disconnected, too far away from each other to communicate. Even his vision zones out. He spends a fair bit of time playing with his own eyesight, focusing in and out on little droplets of rain on the windowpane so that the world outside the window fuzzes in and out, in and out, like the static on Wade’s old tv, like warping colors and motion on the street below are things his eyes can manipulate. None of it makes sense. His thoughts don’t make sense. The occasional moments where his brain stops producing thoughts at all don’t make sense. How one droplet of rain can entertain him for hours on end, or how the feel of the bear’s fur whooshing back and forth when his fingers glide over it can send him into what feels like a trance. He can’t seem to control when he zones out, either. It happens in the lull of the night in the too-quiet apartment, when the world feels like it’s sleeping and breathing slow. He stares at the ceiling, his brain all blank. Thinking nothing. Feeling nothing.

Numb.

Wade Wilson makes the least sense of all.

He’s loud and chatty, sometimes. He can talk for hours without any input from Peter about all sorts of random things. He shies away from anything serious, sticking only to funny anecdotes about a slew of quirky characters. A girl named Domino who’s unreasonably lucky and claims it’s an actual superpower. If she’s real, she shows up at the best possible moments, oftentimes bailing Wade out of jail or helping him with his work, whatever that is. Wade’s talked around that particular topic a whole hell of a lot, but he’s never actually come out and said what he does. Peter can piece some things together… and what he does piece together seems sketchy, a little shady, a little concerning. A gun under the couch cushions ( _ooh, I’ve been wondering where she was!_ ) or a bunch of slits cut out of one wall in the kitchen ( _throwing knives is therapeutic, you sure you don’t wanna try it?_ ) or the jail stories or the bedroom Wade keeps locked up ( _it’s like a bomb went off in there, seriously, I’ll clean it one of these days…_ ) or that time Wade took his phone out into the stairwell of his apartment complex, and Peter could hear him through the walls chatting about bodies that seem to have been disposed of.

Like he said, only a little concerning.

Even more concerning, though?

The fact that he heard that conversation in the first place.

It’s – strange. Isn’t it? Being able to hear conversations happening through the walls? He can hear the people in the adjacent three or four apartments, too, all jumbled voices and televisions and sex sounds. He can hear the omega one floor down being used on a schedule, three or four times in the early afternoons and dozens of times throughout the night, can hear every knock at their door that signals another beta stopping by for a quick fix. It’s not uncommon for people to list their omegas out for use, not uncommon for betas to use their omegas as a way to make money on the side. Of course, most people can use an omega for free in back alleys or at their workplace. Maybe the one downstairs isn’t earning any money at all. Maybe he’s just – being passed around for fun. Used by all the beta’s friends because why not?

He’s being used right now.

Whining around a mouthful, rhythmic grunts and whimpers. Choked cries.

A hand slapping against flesh.

Peter zones out as he tracks another raindrop’s slow descent against the window.

It slides down the glass, slow and steady.

Speeds up a bit when it hits another raindrop.

Slows down again, a snail’s crawl down the window.

He couldn’t hear this well when he was younger. He never heard the neighbors. When, then, did this horrible thing happen to him that lets him hear this well now? It’s a curse. A punishment for being an omega, maybe, or for just being him. Do all omegas hear from impossible distances like this when they’re well fed, nourished? But then, he couldn’t hear like this when he was younger. Peter couldn’t – he can’t – _why is this happening to him_ –

“Hey, Pete?”

Wade’s using his Soft Voice, all slow and careful. Still, Peter must have been zoned out because he flinches anyway, heart thumping in his chest. Despite being all stuck and trapped inside his own head, Peter exerts All the Effort and finally does manage to at least turn his head away from the window until Wade comes into focus. The alpha is in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a spatula in hand, twirling it around on one finger. There’s a carton of eggs and butter set out beside the stove, a dollop of butter already sizzling in a pan. As far as sounds go, it’s one of the good ones, much better than what’s happening right now one floor below theirs. Honing in on it, Peter waits until that soft sizzle drowns out everything else, hyper focusing on each splash of it against the pan’s sides. From the countertop, Wade watches him watch the pan, tilting his head, unbeknownst to Peter growing increasingly concerned by the constant zone outs. At least he isn’t cowering, though, or freaking out, right?

“How do you want your eggs?” Wade asks.

Peter’s watching the pan, though. Seems not to hear him.

He clears his throat. “Hey, Peter?”

The omega’s eyes flick up, toward Wade’s face. Wade checks the hood’s still up on his hoodie and says again, “How do you want your eggs?”

“I –”

Peter’s voice cuts off. He looks – blank, eyes unfocused.

Wade sets the spatula down and edges toward the omega, whose unfocused eyes seem to be staring in the vicinity of the sizzling pan. He’s huddled into a blanket on one of Wade’s fluffy chairs in the living room, has been ever since they’d gotten home, actually, moving only to change bandages or for a bathroom trip or to eat. When he’s not eating or peeing or getting doctored by Wade, he’s sat there in the chair covered head to toe in that blanket, listless and quiet. They’re on day two of the same routine. Two days since they left the clinic. Two days since Peter’s parked himself in that chair and seemingly claimed it for himself. Wade’s tried getting him to sleep in the bed. Wade’s bed, though of course it’s Peter’s bed now. He even cleaned the sheets! But Peter won’t go into the bedroom. Won’t leave the chair. He watches through the window as people amble along on the street below and just sits there. He sleeps there, upright and curled up under the blanket. Even when his eyes are open, though, the boy seems to be sleeping. In a trance, almost. It’s a little creepy. Even the boxes say so.

Is it bad that Wade’s a little creeped out by the vacant stare?

Maybe even a lot creeped out?

Peter needs more than Wade can offer. He needs serious professional help, is what he needs. Deadpool’s a professional, all right, but not the kind Pete needs. He needs someone to talk him through whatever has him suspended in some sort of frozen animation. He needs someone who can fix whatever’s gone wrong in his brain. Instead, he’s got Wade, who can talk for sure, but who never knows if he’s saying anything that’s penetrating the listless, vacant stare. No matter what he says or doesn’t say, Peter just sits there. He nods when he feels like he has to, maybe, but he hasn’t said much of anything at all. Wade misses the kid’s voice. Misses that soft, brave timber.

[Face it, you’re ugly and gross and you stink –]

[[Peter’s never going to feel comfortable around you. Have you forgotten that nobody ever has?]]

[You should let him go.]

[[Anybody’s better than you.]]

Weasel might take the kid if Wade asks nicely. Or threatens bodily harm. He’s the only beta he knows who wouldn’t treat Peter like an object, who wouldn’t hurt him. But Wade’s eyes glow red at the thought of sending Peter to Weasel. Something inside him sees that collar around his neck and thinks, _mine_. It’s wrong on so many levels. Peter isn’t _Wade’s_. Peter is _Peter’s_. Bad alpha. But Peter never has to know that’s how his twisted little knothead brain is thinking, and anyway, Wade’s going to take care of the kid, whether that means tying up a therapist and holding a gun to his head to make it happen –

It’s an idea, anyway.

[A bad one.]

Peter had seemed petrified when Wade asked if he needed help to apply the cream to his ass, so Peter’s been dealing with that on his own. He spends over half an hour in the bathroom with the door locked every night, hopefully applying that junk where it needs applied. He’s back there now, locked up tight in the bathroom, and Wade’s on the couch watching a rerun of his favorite golden girls. He’d made the kid scrambled eggs earlier after being entirely unable to get him to answer how he wanted them cooked, then they’d spent the day in the living room with Wade talking and Peter not talking the day away. There’s a sweet smell in the air now that the sun’s gone down, that soft honey dew sweetness that comes and goes, comes and goes, the earthy ozone wet scent after a good rain making Wade feel sleepy and boneless. It’s weird, but he’s been sleeping better these past few days. His alpha knows where Peter is, knows that Peter is safe. He can sleep.

He drifts off to a laugh track on the tv and to the dark nightfall outside the open window.

-

-

-

[Kill him, kill him, there’s someone –]

[[Stop it, it’s not –]

Something’s wrong. He’s not sure at first what wakes him, just that something does. Feverish and sticky with sweat, Wade rolls off the couch and lands with a thump to the floor, scratchy carpeting itching at his face. His hoodie’s still on, of course, gloves and all, his blotchy red face the only part of him exposed. He’s used to wearing all the layers, well accustomed to keeping himself under wraps. Even when he’s alone he keeps covered, doesn’t like to see himself. But he’s so hot it feels like he can’t pull in a full breath. Gasping, he pushes himself upright and peels off his clothes, peels the hoodie over his head and tosses it to the side. His gloves stick to his skin, but eventually those come off too. It’s dark, but his eyesight feels – different. Better. Through a red haze, he can see every nook and cranny in the room. Sees the empty chair that Peter usually sleeps in, takes in the open window. Something smells – oh, god.

Dragging in a full breath of it, Wade whines. Dimly, he realizes he’s hard in his sweatpants, his cock angled toward his belly. It throbs, pulsing in the dark. Panting, Wade drags a hand over his erection, palming it through his pants. The boxes are yelling something but he’s too hard to hear them, his knot already swelling at the base. Sucks in another gulp of air, of that sweet needy scent – of, of Peter, who’s in heat. Peter’s heat’s in the air and Wade whines again, low in his throat, vision all red and hazy. He’s the sweetest smelling omega, a burst of warmth that wraps itself around Wade’s cock, that forces it to a rigid stand. Through the fog, Wade hears Peter in the other room, in Wade’s old bed, finally using the bed. And he’s – he’s whining, too, with a voice full of something frantic and – and scared. Something in Wade jumps to attention at the sounds, at the whimpers and cries. Peter’s _scared_. He’s _crying_.

Someone’s pounding on the front door.

Growling, Wade drags himself to a shaky stand, his alpha leading the way, thoughts too jumbled to focus. His door’s hinges are shaking from the force of whoever’s pounding on it. Unbothered, half nude and hard, Wade wrenches the door open and a snarling, angry alpha shoves his way in, his scent giving off powerful, rancid pheromones.

Wade shoves him back, hard enough that the alpha’s back hits the hall wall outside.

A piece of plaster rains down on the alpha’s head.

The alpha groans and growls, scrambling back up, scrambling to get inside.

“Fuck off,” Deadpool says, snarls, _roars_.

The other alpha pauses, takes a long slow look at Deadpool, finally seems to see him.

He hesitates.

He’s obviously hard, too, the stinking stench of arousal hanging heavy in the hallway.

“I’ll pay you,” he says then, a greedy little gleam in his wide arousal-blown eyes. He’s looking past Wade now, trying to see into the apartment, scenting the air. “I’ll be in and out – wanna pound that omega, sweet smell – how much –”

Wade grabs him by the face, pushes the alpha down, this time to the ground.

“Fuck. Off,” he says again, whispers it hot against the alpha’s ear.

[Kill him, kill him, go to Peter!]

[[No don’t, don’t, Peter’s scared, lock yourself away from him, he’s _scared_ –]]

Peter would be able to smell it if Wade killed this guy right here. Would be able to smell the decay of death, the odor of it too close to the apartment. Peter’s _scared_. He’s in heat and he’s scared, Deadpool needs to go to him, to make it better, show him he’ll protect, nothing to be scared of, nothing to be –

“Let – lemme pay you,” the alpha tries again, panting under Wade’s hand. He wiggles like a stuck pig. “In and out, be quick, just lemme knot him –”

Wade’s had enough. His alpha’s had enough.

He’s controlled. He’s always controlled. When he kills, he’s controlled.

But Pete’s _scared_.

Wade drags the alpha up by his shirt collar, drags him down the hallway as far away from their apartment as he can get. The alpha’s snarling, snapping his teeth at him, scratching at Wade’s hands and demanding a go at the omega, just one ride, just one knot, how much, he’ll pay, he’ll pay – through the heavy steel exit door, Wade drags the alpha out into the stairwell, shoves him over the balcony so he falls through to the bottom, down eight floors. Stomps back to 8A.

He slams the apartment door shut, locks it up.

Stomps to the window in his angry red haze, wrenches the thing down so hard the wood splinters but doesn’t break. Scents sealed into the apartment now, sealed away behind the scent blockers in the walls, his alpha scents the air, drags Wade toward the bedroom door that’s wide open. He sees Peter sprawled out on the bed like he’d fallen there, writhing against the comforter with his hands clenched into the fabric. He, too, must have felt too hot for clothes, because his shirt and pants lie in a pile on the floor beside the bed, the white bandages wrapped around his middle a stark contrast against the dark blue blanket. He’s hard, too, his painful erection bobbing in the air untouched as he wriggles on the bed and whines.

Wade stumbles toward the bed, toward Peter.

Peter, who must have picked up on his scent, because his clenched eyes open wide. They lock eyes from across the room. Wade freezes in place. Peter’s _scared_.

He edges closer, crooning when the omega’s scent sours.

“’s okay,” he slurs. “Won’t hurt you. Help you.”

Peter hasn’t spoken in days. He does, now, hoarse and pleading, “Pl-please, ‘m hot, pl-please –”

“Help you,” Wade says again.

“H-how?”

Wade stops, tilts his head. The alpha’s fully leading the charge, now, fully at the helm, even the boxes quieting in response to its presence. The omega’s sweet smell is sour with fear and – and sickness. He’s hurt. Wade’s alpha whines, dropping to his knees on the floor, shuffling toward Peter all slow and low to the ground. He tries to make himself seem smaller, seem less scary as he approaches. When he makes it to the bed, he kneels beside it and leans his head against the comforter, a slow hand coming up to stretch out toward Peter. Hot and sweaty, Peter grabs for Wade’s hand, clutches it in a vice. They both whimper at the contact, breathe out in unison.

“Help you,” Wade insists. He can’t seem to speak much else.

But again, Peter whispers, “H-how?”

Peter’s slick is pooled on the bed, smelling so sweet and inviting. But he’s hurt. Can’t take a knot, can’t take anything. He needs it but it’ll – hurt him. He’s too injured for mating. Wade won’t hurt him. Wade will help him.

“Can I? Want to help you.” Wade rumbles, red eyes tracking the collar on Peter’s throat, at the way it moves as Peter swallows. He’s not sure what he’s asking for. Peter knows even less. But still, the omega’s whole body trembles where he lies. He arches his back as a wave of the heat scent fills the room, clenching as another pulse of his slick pools out. Wade crawls onto the bed and wraps himself around Peter, sweat-slick and feverish to the touch.

“Don’t- don’t want to – be used,” Peter manages.

Wade nuzzles his matted hair, breathing his scent in deep. “Won’t, won’t, Peter.”

“Pl-please, are you – are you conscious? A-aware?”

Wade’s hips are moving without his permission, undulating against Peter’s hip. He doesn’t respond verbally, just nuzzles the omega close, tightens his arms around him in a brief hug. Then his hand slides lower, fingertips grazing Peter’s erection. At Peter’s sharp, stilted inhale, the alpha grins, wraps a hand around that length and squeezes.

Peter whines, thrusting into his hand.

“’m aware,” Wade says. “I – think? You need help.”

“Heat won’t stop un-until I’m – used,” Peter moans out, hips jerking. “W-won’t survive – it. Be-being used. But the – the heat won’t stop unless – unless –”

And that’s the kicker, isn’t it? Heats don’t stop unless the omega is taken, one way or another. But Peter’s ass can’t handle anything going inside it right now. Even fingers would be – it’d be a risk. Peter’s going to writhe in this state on this bed forever unless Wade does something, unless Wade helps. And his alpha really, really wants to help.

“You’re okay,” Wade says, breath hot in Peter’s hair. He humps against Peter’s hip again, his length hard and long and big as he grinds it into Peter’s sweet skin. The air is stifling and warm and there’s a fever in the room. The whole room seems to pulse with it, through Wade’s red hazy gaze. If there’s a world outside it, Wade never would have known. Right now, it’s only them. In this room. On this bed. That’s all that exists, all that matters. He nuzzles his omega and says an insistent, “’m gonna help you. Peter. ‘m not gonna hurt you.”

“F-feels good, alpha,” Peter says, breathless as he thrusts into Wade’s hand. “Wade. I ca-can, I can call you – that? Wade?”

“Course, sweetie,” Wade breathes out. “Like it.”

“Like your – like the way you smell,” Peter stutters, twists his head to nuzzle under Wade’s chin, scenting at his neck.

Wade’s alpha really, _really_ _likes_ _that_.

But Peter pulls back a bit, whining. “Smell like – like another alpha. Who –?”

That rancid fear washes over the room again. Wade’s sick at the thought, pulls Peter against him again, his palm rubbing over Peter’s length. “Gone now, no worries. Gone now. Tried to get in but I – he’s gone now.”

“You’re not – not renting me –”

“No!” Wade growls. Peter flinches, and Wade shushes him, nuzzling. “No, Pete, no.”

He whispers again, “No worries. I wanna take care of you.”

Wade’s alpha’s always had a one track mind. _Kill, kill_ , mostly. It’s never looked at a helpless, owned omega and thought, _want_ , though. There’s always been something a little wrong with him, even before Weapon X. He should have wanted to own and dominate and knot omegas. That’s what alphas do. Instead, he wants to feed them things and give them blankets. Always, that’s what his alpha’s wanted. He remembers being six years old, that cold night his dad threw him out of the house, told him to sleep outside because he was stinking the place up with his alpha stench. He was too angry to sleep, though, his alpha too restless, and he’d wandered down to the stop sign at the end of his street. There’d been an omega chained to the stop sign, naked and cold, her head lolled against the metal. He’d taken off his jacket and wrapped it over her shoulders, the tiny jacket not nearly big enough to cover any part of her at all. She’d startled awake at the weight of it, though, jerking away from him with big round eyes and a whimper.

“Why are you out here like this?” he’d asked her.

She sniffed the air, scenting him. Shuffled away as much as the chains allowed.

“It’s cold,” he’d said. “Why are you chained up?”

“You’re cute now,” she’d said. Her voice was hoarse and sad. “But when you’re bigger, you’ll be mean and bad.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re an alpha,” she said.

“I don’t want to be mean and bad,” he’d whispered to her.

“And I don’t want to be chained up in the cold.”

She’d turned her face away from him, then, shrugged off his jacket so it fell to the sidewalk. He didn’t have anywhere to go, though, so he’d sat next to her for a couple hours in the silence of nightfall, wondering when he’d turn mean and bad and why it had to happen at all. His mom and dad were mean and bad, but they weren’t alphas. It seemed like people could be mean and bad no matter what they were.

So why couldn’t alphas be good? Why couldn’t _he_?

He’d left his jacket on the ground beside her, walked back to his parent’s house.

In the morning, his mom had taken a switch to him, that he’d lost his jacket. They wouldn’t buy him another one since he was too stupid to keep track of it. He’d spent the whole winter freezing cold in the walks to and from school, all the while wondering at the omega who’d been chained up in the dark on a random stop sign. It seemed as though everyone were right about alphas being stupid, because he couldn’t understand a single thing about the world or why it worked the way it worked. His alpha was angry inside. All the time, it was angry.

But now, with Peter, in this warm fever-rich haze, Wade’s alpha wasn’t angry.

It was – it was a soft thing. Low to the ground, crooning, baring its neck to Peter.

Wade had never liked his alpha. Barely understood it. As far as alphas went, it never did what they were supposed to do.

But right now? With Peter’s fear smoothing out into that sweet-safe contentment?

He thinks, for a brief second, for just a flash, that maybe –

Maybe his alpha isn’t so bad.


	6. heat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for heat. Does that need a warning? You've been warned.
> 
> Oh gosh, thank you all so much for your kind comments. I'm so consistently inspired by them.  
> Getting back into writing is - good. Very much of the good.  
> So thank you, thank you, thank you.

6\. heat

-

-

-

He knew it was coming.

Still.

_Still_.

When he finally manages to gather enough courage to stand up off the toilet and fumble for the bathroom door, walk with careful, slow steps into the living room where his chair and blanket and bear are, Wade’s passed out on the couch with the tv bright in the otherwise dark room, the screen altogether too loud and flashy, too much to handle. Peter holds his breath as he eases the remote out from Wade’s slackened grip, watching the alpha’s face for signs he might wake. It isn’t the first time he’s seen Wade sleeping, but it’s his first time seeing the alpha through eyes clouded by the beginnings of a heat, and – Peter breathes out a long, slow exhale and stands there, shaking but stopped short by Wade’s face relaxed and at rest, by the alpha’s scent, all at once overpowering and calming. It doesn’t make sense, but the alpha’s – taken care of Peter, hasn’t he? This whole time. At the clinic, here in the apartment. Food and warmth and endless talking, filling up all the empty spaces in Peter with a steady stream of – of _presence_. He’s not alone, not – _less than_ , with Wade. At least, not yet. Wade hasn’t tried a single time to use Peter, hasn’t even hinted around the topic. Days now, days and days, and Wade is still just – feeding him and talking to him and helping him stand upright in the shower.

In _warm_ showers. He’s _clean_. He doesn’t smell anyone else on him and it’s – it’s –

Wade lets him feel _clean_.

Considering all that, considering how – _unreal_ the alpha’s been, Peter can forgive the omega in him that’s so close to the surface for wanting to press his nose against Wade’s neck, for wanting to scooch in on the couch and wrap himself full body into him. Standing above the sleeping person who just – who just _wafts out safe, safe, safe_ , it’s no wonder that it takes every ounce of effort not to give into his omega and just – just lay on top of him and stay there forever.

Peter sets the remote on the table beside the couch.

His legs are shaky.

The air feels warm and thick with his heat, now, and he’s incapable of resisting the urge to scent Wade, to fill his nose with that alpha-strong musk that’s become comforting instead of scary. He can hardly pull in a full breath, all twisted up inside, cramps hitting full force. But he stands as long as he can there, pulling in that scent. It’s all over the apartment, of course. Wade’s scent is everywhere. But it’s strongest here, strongest right next to him. Would be stronger still if Peter pressed up against him, if he leaned over a bit –

Panting, Peter forces his legs to move. Stumbles back and away, cutting off a whine by gnawing on his own lip, by wringing his hands together. They’re clammy and shaking and he’s coming apart –

The chair isn’t a good idea. He can’t sit. He can’t stand. He can barely –

But that room.

Wade said it’s Peter’s now, right? He can use it.

He can – and the bed belonged to Wade. Clean sheets, he’d said, but it used to be Wade’s room. He probably used to spend a lot of time in there if it was his. And he said Peter could use it. He _did_. Stumbling from the snoring alpha, down the hallway, he drags himself to the open doorway to that bedroom, a hand gripping the doorframe as he tries not to hyperventilate. He hadn’t paid much attention to the room when Wade showed it to him, and he can’t focus on it now either, a hairsbreadth away from another wave of the heat. It’s dark and it’s empty and Wade’s scent hits him in the face at the doorway. He can’t contain the whine if he wanted to, now, as he staggers toward the bed and lets himself collapse. Every movement is a struggle. His nerves are on _fire_ and Wade _smells_ like a fire and everything’s just – just too hot and too _burning_ and this is how he dies, this is it, right here right now this is how Peter Parker _dies_.

-

-

-

Omegas go into heat all the time.

It’s not just the stereotype – it’s reality. When omegas aren’t in heat naturally, it can be forced. Easily. Constantly. On a whim. And it is. Often. Because why not? Even betas can get high on heat scents permeating the air, that whiskey-hot fever that rolls through the room. Betas don’t react as strongly, but it’s a drug nonetheless. An insta-aphrodisiac to smell a heat-slick omega, to see them writhe in want and need when usually they’re faking it or crying or listlessly empty shells who lie there and let things be done to them. It’s no fun that way. But an omega in heat, wanting it? Needing something they usually seem to hate? Omegas in forced heats line back alleys and workplaces and come equipped with toys and shackles and gags. They’re _everywhere_. And Wade’s an _alpha_. Betas get off on heat scents, sure, on the sounds and sights of omegas acting like needy little sluts. It isn’t instinctual for them, though. It isn’t _biological_. Betas see omegas in heat and think, “Fuck yeah I could get off on this.”

Alphas see it and go _incoherent_.

The scent alone is usually all it takes.

It’s a hunter’s instinct, a predator waking up, sights and sounds and smells all sharpening into hollow points, into something crisp and writhing inside and _alive_. It sends the human parts of them into the background, those pesky little human thoughts that always focus on the wrong things. Humans are petty creatures with petty problems. Sometimes it takes that overpowering heat scent to shut up all the noise for a while, to focus on what really matters. Taking. Mating. Giving even the smallest parts of you over to another, throwing yourself into that animal one-track mind.

It’s always been different for Wade’s alpha.

It smells an omega in heat and wants to _kill_ whoever made them that way.

_kill, blood, kill_

_the omega needs but doesn’t want_

_the beta wants but doesn’t need_

_unnatural, must kill, blood, ripping flesh, death_

To be fair, it usually winds up following through. He’s killed _so many betas_ who’ve forced heats on their omegas, which means he’s also been around a fair share of omegas swept into a heat. He crouches next to them in alleyways, kills anyone who comes too close, his alpha _hoping_ for them to try, needing their _blood_ the way that the omega just _needs_ beside him. His alpha barely even looks in the omega’s direction, red eyes ever watchful at the mouth of the alleys, hand wrapped around a knife or else drumming fidgeting fingers against a bloodied pipe he’d ripped off the wall and had been using as a makeshift bludgeoning tool. Whatever works. And as the heat fills up the air, that heady, pulsing stench that curls its way around him, his alpha only wants more _blood_ , more _death_ , more _bodies_.

And it gets it. It always gets it.

Betas smell that heat and come a-calling, and Deadpool’s alpha waits for them.

It’s different now.

With Peter in his apartment, writhing on his sheets, sweat-slick and panting.

It’s – different.

It’s not Deadpool’s alpha at the helm right now, it’s _Wade’s_ , all soft cooing touches and slow strokes across his skin, those animal thoughts all centered around Peter’s needs and Peter’s fear and Peter’s comfort. He’s wrapped himself around Peter with his much bigger body, crooning promises of safety and protection and _safety_ into the boy’s ear as he soothes him, one big hand wrapped around Peter’s straining length, the other aimlessly rubbing over the omega’s exposed shoulder. Peter’s been biting his lip to contain his _sounds,_ but the alpha doesn’t like that at all, takes it as a sign the omega isn’t comfortable around him. He whines, slides his hand from the omega’s shoulder to brush his fingertips along the boy’s pretty pink mouth, along that closed, tense line. Wade tries to speak. “Can talk, Peter. You can – don’t have to hide. You’re okay. Take care ‘a you.”

Peter’s shaky exhale is warm on Wade’s finger.

Then he turns his face into Wade’s neck, hides his lips by pressing them against Wade’s carotid, tiny little kisses against his textured skin that send full body shudders through the alpha. His cock thrusts languidly against the omega’s hip, hand warm as it rubs over the omega’s wet tip, back and forth over it until there’s finally a little sound, a tiny breathy whine that vibrates against Wade’s neck. For a handful of minutes this seems to be enough, the slow slide of their bodies wriggling against each other, Wade’s alpha red eyes focused on the top of Peter’s head, his senses honed in on each shudder, on each whimper, on how smooth Peter feels against him. It takes a turn, though, when the next wave of heat wracks through the omega’s body. A shaky hand latches onto Wade’s bicep as the boy shudders and writhes against him, whining low in his throat, finally moaning out a cracked, hoarse plea.

Wade speeds up his hand. “Shh, shh, you’re okay, shh.”

But Peter shakes his head. “N-need, need more, _more_ , alpha, need, _oh_ –”

The omega grabs for Wade’s free hand, grip firm as he guides it down, guides it in between his legs, at the slick that’s wet the sheets beneath them. He pressed Wade’s hand against that spot, against his rim, whining again. There’s a tremor in his voice, now, as he says, “N-need, please, alpha, need –”

Wade pulls his hand back, away from that spot, the slick on his fingers smelling like the sweetest damn thing, groaning low when the omega pleads for it. “Can make you feel good, alpha, can m-make you feel – please, I need – please, don’t you want…?”

“You’re hurt, sweetie,” Wade tries to say, his voice all slurred and rumbling.

Another heat wave has Peter’s back arching off the bed.

Wade scrambles off the omega, away, retreating only for an instant, hard and damn near leaking himself at this point, every nerve alive with the _want, need, want_ curling sweet and hot in the room. Peter cries out as the contact disappears, his hips trying to chase Wade’s hand as it leaves him. One of his hands clench into the sheets while his other hand latches onto his own dick and pumps it a few times, hard and rough. The big alpha leaves the room entirely for one heartbeat, two, until Peter fears he’s scared the man off entirely and cries alone on the bed, feeling far too open and far too – wrung out. His hole _hurts_ , achingly empty, burning on the inside and itching, aching to be filled, those stitches pulling uncomfortably at every wave of the heat that pulses through him. He won’t survive this, he won’t – but he _needs_ and – he _needs_ – his first natural heat in what might be _years_ and _he won’t survive this_ –

It’s too much, that need, too insistent. Fever-hot, Peter’s hand lowers until he can press a finger inside, two fingers, until he’s stretching himself and crying at the burn, crying because it feels like something is _tearing_ but he can’t _stop_ –

A rough, scarred hand wraps around Peter’s wrist, tugging it away from his hole. His fingers are pulled out with a squelch and his hole clenches, trying to chase them, empty and twitching. But Wade is back, he’s back and he’s – he presses a soft kiss against Peter’s slick fingers and moves his hand so it clenches into the bedsheets above his head. Peter clenches those sheets until his fingernails leave crescent-shaped tears in the fabric, his chest heaving as his hole spasms, cold air against the sensitive nerves there. He spreads his legs out, spreads them open because that’s all he is, all he could ever be, just a hole for the next beta, nothing but a needy little –

But it’s not a beta who presses against him now.

It’s not a beta, it’s all _alpha_ , those rich fiery pheromones enough to make Peter’s vision go all hazy-gold, tunneling until Wade is all he can see, kneeling above him on the bed. Somewhere along the way, he’s removed his pants, and he’s – he’s a _sight_ , completely nude for the first time around Peter. Something otherworldly. Wade presses something warm and wet over the omega’s stomach, then, a – a washcloth, hot and soothing all at once. Peter moans, the knots in his stomach instantly relieved, the nausea receding, but his hole’s still clenching in the open air and his slick sticky on the bed, a pool of need. He’s not all conscious of it when he starts to beg, when whispered, breathy words just pour out of him, all whimpered pleas to be filled, to please, please fill him – he’s so empty, he _needs_ –

Wade presses one of those rough fingers against his hole, then.

Keening, Peter humps the air, grinds down onto that finger trying to get more.

But Wade pulls back again, sets a firm hand down on the rag across Peter’s stomach, alpha-red eyes staring down at him. It’s supposed to be scary – _is_ scary – but Peter’s omega whines and wiggles under that hand, undeterred by the fear. Above the fear, there’s only the need. Wade is rough and textured and big – and his voice is all soft, all gentle, he’s everything different from what Peter’s ever seen or had or _heard_ before and it’s – it’s not scary, it’s – please, he _needs_ – “Slow down, baby boy. You’re _hurt_. Lemme take care ‘a you. Nice and easy, that’s it, nice and easy – look at you all open for me, pretty little omega, doing so good. You’re okay, nice and slow, I’m gonna try to find – ahh, there you are.”

He quirks one finger into him, slow, slow, _too slow_.

Only _one_ finger and it’s _too slow_ –

But then that single digit wiggles a little, finds _that spot_ – Peter’s mind screeches to a halt as he jerks his hips up, tries to wriggle under the alpha’s firm, guiding hand, pushes for _more_. Wade shushes him, praises him for keeping his hands in the sheets, tells him how good he is, and it’s just the heat talking but Peter starts _crying_ right there on the bed, right there with that finger in his twitching hole. He grips the sheets tight and he _cries_.

“You’re okay,” the alpha is saying again, over and over, soft little shushes.

The cramps hit again, the rag gone cold by now.

Wade guides his finger in and out so slowly it’s near _unbearable_ , hitting that spot inside him each time. They’re both shaking from the effort to go slow, from the effort to be _still_ , Wade’s whispered praises a constant trickling stream against the dam that’s walled up Peter’s ability to enjoy a heat. Heats aren’t good, heats aren’t – ahh, but the alpha’s finger bumps right where it needs to, not big enough to stretch him the way he needs to be stretched, but – but enough to press where it needs to press to make Peter see stars. And then the alpha’s words cut off as he leans forward and uses his mouth for something else. Moaning at the warmth wrapped around him, the omega’s whole body shaking from the sensation, his mind feels thick and sluggish, every point of contact with the alpha like _fire_. Nobody’s _ever_ –

He’s supposed to be using _his_ mouth on the _alpha_ , not the other way –

oh please, please do that – please don’t stop – _please_ –

He comes completely apart under the alpha’s firm hands, whining out loud, panting out heaving breaths, hands white-knuckled in the sheets as his slick pulses out of him, pulses out from around the alpha’s seeking finger. The alpha slurps his tongue around him with a gusto, with enthusiasm like maybe he _enjoys_ what he’s doing, and he must be, has to be enjoying this because when Peter’s blurry unfocused gaze trails down toward the alpha, past his bobbing head and those red, slick lips, his cock is hard and angry, curved toward the man’s belly in the air untouched. He’s never wanted to reciprocate, never wanted to – but Wade’s cock is pretty like that, skin textured and pockmarked even there, and his knot’s all swollen at the base, which is – it’s – it should be _terrifying_ but Peter _wants, needs, wants_ –

“P-please,” Peter whimpers, whispers, too soft, too soft.

The alpha must have heard it, though, because he comes up for air, a trail of saliva the only thing still connecting them. The sudden chill on his penis makes it jump, bobbing toward Wade’s face. The alpha kisses the tip and giggles, red-eyed and – and he looks _happy_ , his face all soft and eyes wide and satisfied. Peter’s never seen an alpha look this way before, never seen one look all soft and debauched, lips swollen and red from taking Peter in like it’s normal. “Whatcha want, Peter?”

He says Peter’s name like a promise, like an indisputable fact.

His name is Peter. He has a name and it’s _Peter_.

“Gonna take care of you,” the alpha adds. “Let me? Give you anything.”

“I –” Faced with someone actually listening to him, Peter’s heart speeds up.

He closes his eyes, head thumping backward against the bed.

“Shh, no no,” Wade says, petting his side. “Give you anything. Pretty Peter. Whatcha want?”

Peter can’t speak, can’t – someone wants to listen to him and suddenly he _can’t speak_.

“Want my mouth, pretty Peter?” The alpha leans down again and swirls his tongue over Peter’s erection, over the tip, mouthing it until a whine drags itself out of the lump in Peter’s throat. His rough, scarred hand curls around the base of him, pumping up and down. His other hand flexes against Peter’s ass, one finger wiggling inside his slick. “My hands? Baby boy, don’t be scared. Take care of you. Yeah? Let me?”

He sounds so earnest, so – _hopeful_. Peter’s eyes are wet as he blinks them back open.

He takes a deep breath. There’ll be time to panic at these thoughts later. The shame will come later. The shame will always come. But right now, with the pretty, kind alpha’s unique scent blanketing this room, that fiery, sulfuric smell that hugs him close, and his finger so slow and careful as it brushes up against Peter’s prostate, even now still and slow inside him, Peter feels that oh-so familiar curl of shame shutting up, can feel it withering in response to Wade’s – to Wade’s _everything_. The alpha isn’t taking, isn’t – isn’t doing anything right. But maybe he’s doing _everything_ right because Peter wants, needs, wants, his omega surging forward as he finally forces the words past his lips, says a quiet, shy, “I – can I h-hold you, too? Your – can I…? Just – hold it?”

It’s nearly incoherent, but his gaze is on the alpha’s penis, leaving no doubt as to what he wants, what he’s asking for. Something rumbles from the alpha’s throat as he leans forward to nuzzle his face against Peter’s dick. “You sure, Peter? Don’t have to, wanna make you feel good, want to take care of you.”

There’s something – vulnerable in that.

Peter somehow manages to uncurl his fist from the sheets, reaches down a shaking hand to rub against Wade’s head. The alpha flinches at first contact but then leans into the touch, relaxing under it, lets Peter pet him the same way Wade kept doing in the clinic. The texture of him is new and different and grounds Peter in the here and now, helps remind him who he’s with, that he’s not in the alley, not being taken, not being – well. He rubs his clammy hand over Wade’s bald head, over the bumps and ridges of those ever-moving scars, and he breathes.

“I want to,” Peter says. It feels true.

Stronger then, he repeats, “I want to hold you. Alpha. Can I? Please?”

“Don’t have to worry, Peter,” the alpha says. “Don’t have to beg. Give you everything. Let me – here, let’s –”

He sits up, slides his finger out of Peter in one slow, slow glide. Peter whines at the loss, his hole open and twitching, begging for something to fill it. Intellectually he understands that it’d hurt him to be filled right now, that it wouldn’t be smart to try. But there’s no place for that right now in this fever-hot room, no place for thinking. He just wants, he wants and he needs and – he feels _empty_ and it _aches_ – his hands twitch in place as he tries not to reach down, tries not to try and spread himself open.

Wade lays out beside him on the bed, then, upside down so they can touch each other. Peter should be ashamed at how quickly he latches onto that angry red penis, should feel that all-too familiar curl of _whore-slut-omega_ when he grabs hold of it. But Wade whines under him, his breath hot against Peter’s own erection, hips moving slow into Peter’s grip, and he can’t think this is bad. He can’t think anything about this is wrong or bad or – or whorish, because Wade takes him in his mouth and he can’t breathe through how hot and wet and _real_ this feels. His hand wrapped around the big alpha feels right; it feels right when Wade twitches in his hand, when his mouth hums out whining vibrations into Peter’s own erection. He likes how firm he feels, likes the weight of him, feels slick pooling under him all over again as he grips Wade’s dick and makes _him_ feel good, too.

It’s – it’s never been mutual before.

There’s something overwhelming about it, about Wade slurping around him, about holding onto Wade in return, gripping hard as he tugs on him. Then Wade traces his finger around Peter’s rim before pressing into him again. It goes from overwhelming to all-consuming, the smells of their scents mixing in the air around them, heat and hot and _burning_ as he feels swept away by it all, swept into a wave of his heat that whites out his vision and curls his toes, makes him arch into Wade’s mouth and whine as he spills inside that wet, determined mouth. The alpha swallows around him, holding on for the ride, and when those pulses finally recede and Peter twitches a hand around Wade’s erection, whimpering, the alpha raises his head grinning, licks his lips. There’s drool on his chin. Red-eyed, Wade swoops his head low again and licks down Peter’s thighs, licks at his slick, laps at it like a cat hungry for milk.

Peter shudders all over, tugs on Wade’s penis.

It’s long and curved and fits just barely in Peter’s hand, but – but it’s not scary.

Somehow, Peter isn’t scared right now?

He’s all melted snow and heavy limbs, his omega too close to the surface. So close he can feel his chest rumbling, can feel the vibrations in his throat. He’s – he’s done this before, when he was a kid. Sometimes. But he can’t remember when – he can’t think of _why_ he might be doing this now, when he’s supposed to be _taken, controlled, taken_. This isn’t a life where omegas should be _purring_.

But he is.

His omega is – is _purring_.

It’s thinking _alpha, want, alpha_ and it’s _purring_.

He’d told Wade that he would use his hands. That he could still make the alpha feel good even if his ass was too – damaged. And he – at the time, he couldn’t imagine _wanting_ to do it. He’d been _determined_ to do it but he hadn’t _wanted_ to. But his omega feels soft, all warm, and Wade’s still licking at his thighs like he can’t get enough. Alphas don’t _do_ this. They take and they take and they – but Wade hasn’t. Even now, he’s just – giving. Expecting nothing. Not even thrusting into Peter’s hand, just these slow languid movements, all soft and accepting. Or, rather, _hard_ and accepting. So, so hard. The heat is quiet, now, the waves satiated into a brief lull.

Trying not to jostle Wade, Peter scoots closer to the alpha, cranes his neck.

Takes that hard length into his mouth.

-

-

-

Peter’s slick is _fucking nirvana_.

Wade feels drowned by it, positively drowned. In the best of ways. Can a drowning be a good thing? Because he’s drowning and it’s good, it’s oh so good, he wants to choke on it and never come up for air, his alpha instantly addicted to how this boy _tastes_ –

And then, just when this shit couldn’t get any better, Peter _deepthroats_ him.

Wade groans out loud and freezes in place, asserting every bit of effort into not moving an _inch_. Peter still has bruises on his face, he’s not – he’s _injured_ , he shouldn’t be doing this – oh, he’s a wizard with his tongue do that _again_ –

[How can he even be doing this? We’re disgusting.]

_heat, take care, want, want_

[[Dumb alpha doesn’t even realize how gross it is.]]

[How is this beautiful boy not hurling chunks right now at the sight of it?]

[[At the _smells_. Shit we are _gnarly_.]]

[The _gnarliest_.]

_heat, want, Peter smells good, happy, safe, want –_

The heat seems to be – calming down, now that Peter’s been taken care of. It’ll come and go for a while yet, but it’s – quiet now, the scent less an inferno and more a smoldering ember in the background. As soon as Peter’s mouth wraps around him and takes him in, Wade is seeing stars, groaning and whining as the omega leads the charge. He keeps as still as he can, hoping not to hurt the boy, determined not to add another bruise to that pretty, injured face, but he can’t stop the tremors, can’t stop himself from coming almost right away, flooding that warm mouth with hot white liquid. He’s been hard for what feels like forever now. That warmth was too sudden against him, too much too fast. Peter swallows reflexively but some leaks out of the corner of those pretty pink lips. Wade very suddenly itches to roll himself around and kiss those lips with his own, wants to taste himself there, to mix Peter’s slick with his own come. And he isn’t the best at resisting his own urges, so.

He rolls himself around and presses his lips to Peter’s.

Peter hums, eyes closing as he – he kisses back. They’re _kissing_.

_take care, want, mate, pretty omega, take care_

But with the ebbing of Peter’s heat comes the sudden influx of voices.

[What are you _doing_? Peter isn’t _mate_. Peter is _scared omega who has no where else to go_!]

[[You’re naked in bed with a terrified omega and you’re _liking_ it.]]

[You get off on scared omegas now?]

[[You’ve turned into an asshole knothead only looking for one thing –]]

[ _Forcing_ it –]

_no, no, take care, keep safe, take care_

[[Convincing yourself he could actually ever want you. He’s in heat you dipshit, there’s no way he actually wants _you_.]]

[You’re _naked_ right now, do you realize how gross you look –]

[[Take a look in a mirror sometime, you’re a literal _nightmare monster_ sucking face with an omega who _fears_ you –]]

_mate? want? take care?_

[He’s not your fucking _mate_ , are you crazy?]

[[We don’t have a mate. Nothing that looks like _us_ gets to have a _mate_ –]]

Somewhere along the way, Wade stopped responding to the kiss, his lips stiff and unmoving against Peter who finally pulls back, uncertain. The omega under him looks up at him through soft brown eyes, his brow furrowed in concern, his lips smooth and wet and unblemished. He looks beautiful and unblemished everywhere else, too, besides the spattered bruising. Wade might be sick. He scrambles off the boy, whimpering, throws himself on the floor beside the bed… the room is dark and smells like sex, smells like _them_ , like that honey-rich sweet scent when Peter’s content mingling so well with Wade’s fire, but that can’t be right because Wade isn’t wearing any clothes at all right now, he’s completely naked and he’s – he’s _gross_. He’s _large_ and _alpha_ and he’s positively disgusting to look at, to _smell_ , and Peter just – he just laid there and took all that. He laid there and let Wade, let Wade –

Only he didn’t _let_ Wade do anything, did he?

Peter hadn’t had a _choice_.

The omega was supposed to be safe here. Wade’s alpha was supposed to be – was supposed to have kept the kid _safe_. He was supposed to keep covered and stay away from him and not scare him. Instead, at the first hint of a heat, he was – he –

_mate_ , his alpha insists. _take care, mate, take care_

But alphas are dumb. It’s so dumb that it doesn’t even realize what it’s done. It’s so dumb that it doesn’t even grasp how unattractive Wade is, how he’s not even mate material. Nobody would ever actually _want_ Wade. Wade doesn’t want Wade. Wade wants to be somebody else, anybody else, but he’s stuck like this and he can’t stand – his alpha is an _idiot_. It’s so dumb that it smells an omega in heat and thinks _mate_. It’s so dumb that it still somehow thinks Peter wanted all of that. Wanted _him_.

He’s not proud of it, but he might be panicking.

Wade stumbles to a stand, his legs like jelly. He needs to find clothes. Cover. Regroup.

“W-wade?” Peter’s voice, drawing him back toward the bed.

The omega is sitting up on his elbows, still splayed out with slick on his thighs. Wade might be breathing erratically, can feel himself hyperventilating, standing there shaking with his skin too exposed, too exposed. Peter pushes himself to a sitting position, his face all soft, soft, concerned. He pats the bed beside him, staring at Wade. “Can you – come here?”

Wade’s eyes are wide, the red all bled out of them. He takes a step toward the door.

“P-please?” Peter adds. He takes a deep breath. “You said – said anything I want.”

[Brave omega.]

[[Why does he want _us_? We’re literal trash.]]

[Maybe he’s lying? Maybe it’s the heat? Maybe he likes trash?]

Wade can’t say no to Peter. He should run, wants to run, but – but he did say Peter could have anything he wanted, and somehow that seems to mean Wade sitting with him right now. So he edges back toward the bed. Sits on the end of it, all stiff and fidgeting. Can’t look at the pretty omega, can’t face him. His heat scent is still so strong, so potent, and Wade can’t let his alpha succumb to it again, can’t let his alpha do whatever it wants to do when it just – it doesn’t get how this works. It doesn’t understand that it can’t have nice things. He plucks at the sheet and wishes he could cover up with it, but Peter is still sitting on the thing. But then Peter’s hand reaches over and grips his arm, and the boy’s head comes down to lean on Wade’s stiff, unyielding shoulder.

“Tired,” Peter says, then a soft, hesitating: “Are you… okay?”

“You should – should sleep,” Wade says. “While you can. I’ll – ‘m sorry, baby boy. I didn’t mean to – I didn’t want to. I should go get dressed. ‘m sorry you had to look at – not to mention _touch_ –”

“Liked it,” Peter says. “Alpha. Liked – you.”

Wade’s shoulders hunch. He’s got way too many voices saying otherwise right now.

“Talk later,” Peter says then. “Will you – can we sleep?”

Wade jumps to a stand again. “Of course, I’ll just go –”

“T-together?”

Wade freezes, at once at war with himself, too many voices expressing their opinions on the matter loud and clear. His alpha is a whimpering, confused mess. He needs to cover up. He’s gross and he smells and he’s – he’s all pustules and scabs and Peter should _not_ want to – but Peter’s _saying_ he does want to, and he wouldn’t say something he doesn’t mean, would he? Peter’s capable of thinking for himself, and right now this is what he’s saying he wants. For some reason, he apparently wants to sleep with Wade Winston Wilson, the big ugly alpha nobody’s ever wanted before. It’s baffling and confusing and Wade’s still a little high on the heat-scent that’s coiled in the air around them, still a little hard. They’re sticky and need to shower. But Peter wants to sleep with him.

And beyond the panic and the disbelief… Wade _yearns_ for that.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah, okay. We can – we’ll sleep.”

Peter scoots himself to the head of the bed, curling up among the pillows, and when Wade finally manages to get himself there too, Peter curls around him. He throws an arm over Wade’s bare pecs and leans his head against Wade’s shoulder and he’s – there’s a low, low rumble emanating from the omega’s chest, the vibration sending shivers down Wade’s arm. Is he – do omegas _purr_?

[Oh em gee this is precious!]

[[What the hell is even happening right now?]]

_mate, take care, mate_

The alpha sounds – rather smug. Wade tries to breathe, tries to relax into the pillows. His skin feels hot to the air, burning where Peter’s pressed against him. He’s itchy and hard and he can understand literally none of this, literally none of this at all. When it sounds like Peter’s breaths even out, his head heavier on Wade’s shoulder, the alpha reaches up a hand to lay it on Peter’s arm, all slow and wide-eyed. His heart’s in his throat and he feels like crying.

[Peter’s gonna be terrified of you when the heat ends.]

[[Just you wait. This won’t last.]]

[He’s – he’s purring though. Maybe we did something right?]

[[He’s in heat. What could a big ugly alpha have possibly done _right_?]]

Wade dozes off to those words, to that question that lingers.

What could a big ugly alpha _ever_ do right?

-

-

-

[[Nothing. The answer is nothing.]]

[Oh God, this is gonna hurt isn’t it?]

_mate, take care, safe, protect_

[[… idiot alpha.]]


	7. waking up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for more heat shenanigans.  
> I love your comments so much, words can't even express. They're a break in the clouds. 
> 
> I feel like this chapter is all over the place, but I've got a plan now for where it needs to go, so we'll see how it, well, goes...
> 
> Thanks for being here. <3

7\. waking up

-

-

-

Peter’s whining in his sleep.

Sweet sex hangs in the air like a warm blanket over the room, the smells of them mixing to the point where Wade can’t pick out one scent from the other. It’s all rich and warm and heady, an air of calm he’s never smelled in his apartment before. He’s also sticky as fuck, though, sweat-soaked and hard, dick pulsing in between his legs. It makes for a stimulating, breathless mix of uncomfortably comfortable, and if the situation weren’t so – so damn _sad_ , then Wade might be as blissed out as his alpha is. Instead, as soon as Peter’s whines wake him up, his brain comes alive thinking Not Nice thoughts, and he simultaneously wants to dart from the room to find a hoodie to disappear behind and reach over to pull Petey closer, scent at his neck.

Instead, he just lays there, stiff and aching. Curls his hands into fists to resist reaching out.

Peter must have moved away from him in his sleep, is curled up by himself a few feet away. Probably got sick of touching Wade’s skin, which feels even itchier than it usually does, all red and inflamed. He wiggles a bit on the sweat-damp sheets to scratch that itch, but the movement just makes it worse, pulls at the scabs. Peter murmurs something, then, shifting a bit, and Wade sucks in a breath to keep from moving again, to keep from waking him.

[[When’s the last time we were naked in bed with another person?]]

[Before Weapon X for sure.]

Oh, God. They’re not about to bring up –

[[That’s right!]] Yellow sounds positively gleeful. Wade tenses in the dark, whispers for them to shut the fuck up, but when have they ever listened to him, anyway? [[That beta who got a kick outa dominating the big dumb knothead who somehow thought he was good enough to stay in school. I miss the way he’d call us trash as he was –]]

[You remember how _disgusted_ he was with the knot?]

[[He’d slap us around as he’d plow us from behind, calling us all sorts of –]]

_IN THE JUNGLE, THE MIGHTY JUNGLE, THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHTTTTT_

For some reason, the steady rhythm of _uyimbube, uyimbube, uyimbube, uyimbube_ is the first song that comes to mind, so Wade thinks the melody as loudly and as obnoxiously as he can to block out the voices. The assholes _know_ it’s never a good day when they bring up – _that_ – and he’s in the middle of a heat with _Peter_. This needs to be a good day. As good a day as Wade’s brain can have, anyway, which buckles underneath the weight of an extremely low bar. The red glow of the clock on the nightstand says it’s only been a few hours since they fell asleep, but Peter’s stirring, now, moaning here and there. His brow is creased, mouth downturned. He won’t be asleep much longer. Wade breathes in and out a few slow, measured breaths.

Okay.

He can do this.

He can keep the alpha in check. He can help Peter not injure himself trying to fill himself up, stay in control and not feel like the worst sort of asshole in the process. But shit, they barely even _know_ each other. If Peter’s ass wasn’t damaged, he’d have given the omega some toys to use and locked him in the bedroom, kept his alpha well away from someone who’s too compromised by the heat to say no. But Peter wouldn’t have been able to control himself, not like this. Wade’s smelled plenty of forced heats before, with that unnatural chemical twinge that scrapes against his senses with all the finesse of a sandpaper dildo. This heat’s different. It’s all the way _sweet_ , pungent and strong. A _real_ heat, maybe the first one Wade’s ever smelled. There’s no way Peter could reasonably be expected to stop himself from trying to relieve that ache inside him, and his ass _is_ damaged. If he’s alone in his room, he’ll hurt himself trying. Shit, he almost did already trying to spread himself on his own fingers earlier. So Wade’s staying. He wants to pretend he’s staying only to help Peter, only to make sure the omega doesn’t hurt himself. He wants to pretend he’s doing the right thing here, but his alpha is – is _happy_. That can’t be a good sign.

_safe, mate, take care_

[[How many times are you going to repeat those same fucking words?]]

[I don’t think the poor thing _knows_ any other words.]

[[I can’t wait to hear what it says when pretty Petey flat out rejects us.]]

[Ooh, maybe it’ll know other words then.]

[[Words like _pitiful_ , and _pathetic_ , and _loser_.]]

Wade can physically feel his alpha drawing in on itself, curling up inside his chest. It feels a little hard to breathe, which isn’t anything new. It’s either a really good thing or a really bad thing that Peter takes this moment to finally roll toward him, panting in the dark as he throws an arm over a frozen Wade’s chest and burrows his sweaty face into Wade’s shoulder.

“P-please,” Peter whispers it through panted breaths. His hips gyrate against Wade’s side.

Wade’s alpha is instantly alert.

“You’re okay,” Wade says for the both of them. He sucks in another breath. Peter must be fully out of it not to even seem to notice Wade’s skin at all right now, pressing full-body into him like he’s a normal person who isn’t textured like ground beef. But his alpha croons in his head and doesn’t seem to remember the whole skin thing, either. It’s getting in Wade’s way right now that he’s fighting himself, warring with the alpha. He can’t seem to make himself move, can’t seem to press through the sudden spike of terror and insecurity and give Peter what he needs. But Peter can’t want this. It’s _biology_. They didn’t discuss this prior to the heat, when Peter would have been able to think, would have been able to tell the big ugly alpha off for even suggesting he help the omega through this heat. He shouldn’t be here in this bed, his body shouldn’t be responding to these panting breaths that don’t belong to Wade, they’re just, this isn’t –

“Alpha, p-please,” Peter’s saying, over and over, his breath hot on Wade’s shoulder, lips wet and warm against his ruined skin. “Need yo-ou, please. Know I’m just a – ‘m a slut, sorry, ‘m used but I can, my mouth, please, please –”

[[He thinks _we’re_ rejecting _him_.]]

White’s an endless string of curse words.

_safe, protect, safe, mate_

Thoughts turning off, giving way under sheer instinct, Wade turns his body and wraps his arms around Peter, holding onto him while the smaller omega shakes and writhes. His alpha feels soft like melted wax inside his head, low to the ground as it frets over _mate, mate, safe, soothe_. Wade smooths a trembling hand over Peter’s tangled curls. He rubs his nose over that hair, breathing in that sweet, rich blend of _them_ , crooning out whispered praises he can’t honestly remember one moment after he says them, his head too full of endless praises for the boy in his arms to figure out which ones he’s saying and which ones he’s thinking and which one’s he’s feeling. Peter is so brave to go through a heat with Wade, to turn into him instead of cower, so brave to be using his voice, what a pretty voice, sweet Peter has such a sweet voice –

“Take care of you, don’t worry.”

Wade unfolds from around Peter and gets them into a better position, has Peter lay his head on the pillows and then gently guides the omega’s hands to the sheets, to grab a fistful of them and spread himself out. Peter’s limbs move willingly, obedient, and when Wade kneels in between his legs and taps on each leg, Peter spreads them and shows his wet hole without hesitation, all loose and sloppy and twitching in the open air. He grips the sheets in both hands as he rides the waves of the heat pulsing through him, begging Wade to touch him, to fill him, please, he’s so empty, please, it _aches_ –

“Shh.” Wade runs one of his scarred hands over Peter’s trembling thigh. “I gotcha, pretty Peter. You’re doing so well for me, honey, so well. Look at you, so open and ready, your slick smells like heaven, like honey and warm and wet and sweetness. You’re perfect, I gotcha, you’re okay. Can I taste you? Feed that pretty hole my tongue?”

Peter’s eyes are wide and unfocused, tears wetting his lashes. “P-please, please.”

“Good please or bad please?”

Peter’s hips lift off the bed a bit as he wiggles, humps his penis into the air. “G-good, please, I need – need, please –”

“Shhh, I gotcha.” Wade’s hand soothes over Peter’s thighs again, warm trembling skin like fire under his hands. He’s whispering praises about how brave Peter is, about how good he’s being, how trusting and open and good, all the way up until his breath is warm against Peter’s pulsing hole and his face is pressed in between the omega’s legs. One of Peter’s hands unfolds from the sheets and blindly reaches down to lay across Wade’s head, and he keens out loud and shakes when Wade’s tongue traces around his rim, warm and wet, warm and wet, points of connection that force Peter’s eyes closed as he bites his lip and tries not to make too much noise. His slick pulses out of him in a slow, slow stream that Wade’s tongue catches. He swipes a slow stripe over Peter’s hole, swirls his tongue, Peter shaking from the effort of being silent, eyes leaking from the overstimulation, from the _want, need, want_ that hovers in the spaces where they aren’t connected. He can’t make sense of it but something inside him _aches_ to drag the alpha up and latch onto him, to press into him full-body, to be filled and full of him as they wrap themselves into each other. Heats make him thirsty, his whole body on fire as it craves being filled. Heats haven’t ever made him want to – want to – _wrap himself_ around the one taking him, though. It feels like a whole other level of want he’s never experienced before, his omega reaching out for Wade, crying out for him, wordless and stilted and scared.

Then Wade’s tongue presses against his pucker.

Peter’s toes curl. He’s pretty sure he cries out loud, cries something unintelligible.

One of Wade’s hands smooths over his thigh, petting him as he works.

It’s slow torture, sensory overload that turns the whole world hazy around them. The heat lasts days longer than it feasibly should, days and days where Peter _aches_ , cries because he’s empty, Wade shushing him and whispering little praises here and there. By day four, they’re exhausted and wrung out, high off the scents, a little lost in their own world. Wade manages to put in a grocery order on his busted up old ass laptop because they’re running out of food and he can’t find his cellphone, but his alpha doesn’t want to open the front door even for a moment, doesn’t want to risk anyone smelling how potent and delicious Peter’s scent is. Peter watches Wade pace in front of the door where he’s sprawled out on the couch, head propped up on pillows from the bedroom. He’s naked under the blanket they’d dragged off the bed, naked all except for the collar. He plays with the d-ring with a finger as he watches the alpha, listens to him talking to himself, eyes half-lidded as he admires the way the man prowls from side to side, admires the way his muscles flex. After four days of heat, the alpha’s grown less aware of the fact that he’s unclothed, seems less bothered showing his skin off. Loose sweatpants hang off his hips in a way that reveals just enough to captivate, and captivated Peter is. He can’t seem to keep his eyes off the way those sweatpants hug his ass as he’s prowling in one direction, can’t seem to keep his eyes off the way they show off those hips of his as he’s prowling in the other. The alpha is built like a wall of muscle, all agile grace in the way that he moves. For someone so big, he’s light on his feet. Prances, skips, jumps up and down like an eager child when he’s excited about something.

His omega is all curled up and – sated.

It’s – so weird.

So very, very weird.

He feels – sticky and gross, though. Could use a shower. Wade’s showered a couple times while Peter rested off and on over the past few days, each time returning to the bed smelling a little less like Peter for his omega’s comfort. Even in his sleep, Peter hadn’t liked it, had sensed the change and nuzzled close to fix it, to get his scent back on the alpha. But Peter’s been too strung out to be able to stand in a shower, and he isn’t allowed a bath until the stitches in his asshole dissolve and he’s healed down there. Wade’s given him sponge baths instead, which was weird. Weirdly – alluring. Weirdly sensual, the big alpha taking care of him, washing away his filth while he’d talked and talked and talked.

Somehow, the alpha makes all this bizarre stuff feel – almost normal.

He’s so casual about it all.

Giving an omega a sponge bath?

Nobody else would have done that. _Nobody_.

“I think it’s safe to open the door,” Peter croaks from his safe little cocoon on the couch.

Wade’s pacing screeches to a halt, head tilting in Peter’s direction. He immediately switches his trajectory toward the kitchen, pours Peter another glass of water and brings it to him, helps him sit up to drink it. Peter does because he’s thirsty, producing all that slick having taken its toll, and this should feel weird but doesn’t, the alpha waiting on him like this, so quick to enter his space like he belongs there and Peter so quick to let him. Wade smooths a hand over Peter’s head while he drinks, apparently incapable of resisting the urge. Similarly incapable, Peter presses his head into it, leans into the touch, closing his eyes on a sigh and breathing deep of the alpha’s scent. It lingers in the air as the alpha returns to the door.

He’s eyeing it. “We’re safe in here,” Wade says, almost whining.

“Your food won’t be safe if you leave it out there, though.”

“Our food,” Wade corrects, almost absent-mindedly. “I think I _know_ it’d be fine to open the door on some level. It’ll take like three seconds to bring all those bags in, two if I’m speedy. And if there’s anything I’m good at, it’s speedily bringing in a grocery order to avoid having to interact with pesky neighbors. They’re mostly betas and they mostly leave me alone anyway. But I also don’t want to? We’ve been safe in here. We’ve been – it’s been good. And your scent’s like hell and heaven smooshed together to make a fantastic little bliss baby. That fantastic little bliss baby shouldn’t be subjected to the outside world. The world’s _out there_. My alpha – um. I don’t like it.”

“Is that who you talk to?” Peter asks. His heart beats fast at asking the question, instincts yelling at him to shut up, shut up, he’s got no right to speak or ask questions or exist. He tries to ignore it. “When you’re talking to someone? Is it your alpha?”

Wade’s shoulders slump forward, head ducking. “Sometimes.”

“It has a voice?”

“Sometimes.”

Peter hesitates, but the alpha looks so suddenly stiff and uncomfortable, facing away from him. He wants the confident prowling to come back, so he ignores his own racing heart. “My omega feels like something _other_ , sometimes, too. An awareness outside myself? I… don’t usually hear it as a voice, but I can see how it could manifest that way? For me, it’s more like a – presence? Feelings and senses that sometimes don’t belong only to me. A weak, cowering thing that likes to curl into itself and hide away. It’s either a ball of nerves or a ball of – of need, or both at once in the back of my mind.”

“Shit, Peter, that’s not how I see your omega at all.”

The matter-of-fact tone stops Peter short.

He swallows. “You – don’t?”

Wade turns to look at him, those pretty brown eyes wide and earnest, sparking in the light of daylight that streams in through the window. “Course not. Look at it this way – I basically just admitted that I hear voices, and instead of that scaring you away, you use that pretty voice of yours to tell me something personal about _you_. Evening the playing field and shit, tryin’ to make _me_ feel better. I can tell you’re scared of me, sometimes, but you still talk to me like I’m a person. Never had an omega talk to me before, did you know that? Shit, I even scare betas off.” He taps on his head, grins a little. There’s some melancholy to his expression that calls out to Peter, makes his omega whine. Peter’s hand clenches into the blanket, the urge to get up and cross the room to press into the alpha almost too strong to resist. “I’ve got enough voices up here to form an off-key quartet. In fact, we _do_ form an off-key quartet sometimes. Yellow’s got the worst taste in music, oh em gee. We don’t even agree on the _normal_ shit. Yellow thinks socks and sandals together is gnarly, the bastard, and White makes fun of pineapple on pizza. But – shit, Pete, it’s unanimous up here when it comes to you. All four of us thinks you’re brave as fuck.”

_pretty mate, safe, comfort, protect_

[[We also unanimously think he’s gonna run once this heat ends.]]

[The alpha doesn’t. Poor dumb nut thinks we’re fated or some shit.]

[[It’s almost funny how pathetic that is.]]

[Like someone as pretty and brave as Pete would get stuck with a loser like Wilson.]

[[One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever dooooooo.]]

[Two can be as bad as one, but there ain’t no number like the number one!]

[[Four’s pretty bad too.]]

[It’s definitely too crowded up here. That dumb alpha’s stolen all my elbow room –]

[[Can’t masturbate without elbow room –]]

“Somebody’s walking this way.” Peter’s voice cuts through the boxes, that muted, subdued tone as the omega props himself up on his elbows on the couch enough for the alpha to freeze up and listen to the outside world. He can’t hear anything besides the cars on ground level honking and tires rumbling over asphalt, a muffled engine backfiring. But Peter’s looking a little spooked, his bruised, pale face wide-eyed as he watches the door. His heat’s tapered way down, spikes of it a ghost in the air, his scent all calm and breezy, but it sours a little as they listen at the door. Wade peers through the peephole and sees bags of food on the mat, not a soul in the hallway.

Still, Peter says somebody’s coming. Not sure how the kid knows, but it’s always good to get a heads up. His alpha’s on high alert at the news, growling in the back of his mind, eyes bleeding red as he shoves himself to the forefront. A wave of his alpha stench rolls off him, pungent and lingering as it spreads throughout the room and coats all the fabrics. Peter seems not to notice, doesn’t even flinch. It’s unreal.

“Is somebody about to steal our groceries?” Wade will gank somebody over the bag of pop tarts out there.

Also, to keep Pete safe. That too.

But the _pop tarts_.

“It’s a man,” Peter says. “Dunno who. But he’s walking up the stairs and mumbling under his breath about you. I assume it’s you? Wilson’s your last name, isn’t it?”

“You can hear into the stairwell?”

Peter’s eyes flick to the floor, darting away. “Um, yeah? I guess. He’s one floor away.”

“That is so fucking cool.” Wade keeps an eyeball in the peephole, waiting to see who’s about to pop out of the stairwell. Someone using his last name could mean anyone at all. Likely nothing good… probably not an assassin after Deadpool though, so. Do all omegas hear this well? Or is this a Peter-specific thing?

[[Oooh, do I smell a plot twist?]]

[Whoever smelt it dealt it.]

[[… I can’t stand you.]]

It turns out to be the landlord who stomps through the doors down the hallway and stops in front of Wade’s door, breathing hard and red-faced. Elevator must be out. He’s an older man with all of eight teeth and a receding hairline, potbellied and greasy. A beta, of course, because you can’t be a landlord and be anything else. Or maybe an alpha could become a landlord in theory, but it wouldn’t work in practice. Who would the tenants be? Other angry dumb knotheads who can’t string six words together? No thanks. The man leans over their groceries to bang on the door as he scratches his stomach through a wrinkled button-up. Wincing at the sound so close to his face, Wade takes his eye off the peephole and shuffles back a step, shrugging at Peter’s wide-eyed, frozen face.

“It’s just the landlord,” Wade whispers. “He’ll go away if we’re real quiet.”

“Wilson, you asshole!” The man bellows through the door. Peter visibly stiffens, hand gripped tight in the blanket, his other frozen on his collar. Wade’s alpha stench rolls through the room all over again, pheromones screaming back-the-fuck-up and stop-scaring-Peter. Not that Dewie can smell it through the scent blockers in the apartment, but he never claimed his alpha was smart. It just knows that it doesn’t like the look of Peter scared, _especially_ not here, _especially_ not during a heat. So it reacts, sending those strong pungent signals wafting through their living room. He’s expecting the smell to make Peter recoil, to make him even more afraid, maybe. Maybe he’ll run into the bathroom to escape it, to escape _Wade_.

Wade holds his breath, waiting for it. Braced.

Instead, Peter breathes in a deep inhale and his shoulders relax. His hand plays with his collar, eyes on Wade.

The landlord is ranting. “You’re not being _real quiet_ and I’m not going anywhere until you get your slimy friend to answer his fucking phone! That body’s stinking the whole first floor up!”

“Body?” Peter mouths.

Wade waves a hand in the air like he’s batting away a fly. “Did you use the number I gave? He always answers that one.”

“Yes I fucking well did, and no he fucking well didn’t answer!”

Weasel _always_ answers that line. Even in the early morning hours when he’s grumpy and borderline homicidal.

“… Did you leave him a message?”

The landlord’s response is both colorful and descriptive. He ends his tirade with a definitive, derisive, “If that body’s not gone by tonight, I’m calling the cops.”

He stomps back toward the stairwell, his steps loud enough for Wade to track all the way down the hall. When he’s gone, Wade turns back toward Peter. Wordlessly, he gets the omega another glass of water, moves the boy’s feet so he can sit himself under them and prop them up on his lap, hand on one of Pete’s ankles as they sit in a strange silence. The boxes expect an axe to fall any second. They’re placing bets on how brutal it’ll be. But Peter lets Wade sit beside him, lets him set a scarred hand on his ankle and just rest it there. He makes no move to leave or question or say anything at all.

Wade’s braced, though. He can’t sit still or stay silent for long. “So… I kind of killed an alpha that was trying to get in here when your heat first started? I’m pretty sure the world’s better off though, to be fair.”

Peter’s silent.

Wade can’t make himself look over to see what his face might be saying.

His eyes stay fixed on Peter’s feet, on how bony they are.

[Gotta fatten our boy up, yo.]

[[Have we forgotten all about the groceries out in the hall? Isn’t there milk out there?]]

[Shh, this is more important! Peter knows we kill people!]

[[Speak for yourself. I for one am gonna want a glass of milk to drown myself in when Peter runs for the hills.]]

[Dude, screw the milk. We’re totes gonna eat a bullet.]

[[… point.]]

[Yay!]

[[I still want that fucking milk, though.]]

“He was an asshole,” Wade says, desperate to drown out the boxes. His alpha is a quiet rumbling in the background, too proud of protecting Peter to care about the current conversation, satisfied by the contact of his hand on Pete’s ankle. Such a simpleton. Not that Wade isn’t just as satisfied by it, because he is. But… he’s not exactly looking forward to it going away, is all. Has he ever had somebody he’s needed to explain this to before? Everybody he knows just – knows already. They either hide bodies for him or they pay him to take someone out or they magically luck their way into sneaking Deadpool out of prison. How can he gently break the news that he kills people for money and sometimes for free to an omega who’s relaxed so much around him lately? Peter’s going to fear him all over again.

All their progress, shanked by Dewie.

[[All by myselfffff, don’t wanna be –]]

[All by myselffff!]

His hand wants to grip Peter’s ankle and hold on tight, but he relaxes his hand instead, keeps it loose in case the omega wants to bolt. They’d moved to the living room for a change of scenery and because Wade changed the sheets on the bed, but now he wishes they could be back in that room with its heady, rich scent and its pillows and its comfort. Peter’s heat scent is weaker now, a cooling ember as he comes off it slowly. He’d stopped producing slick earlier this morning, his hole loose and tender but not as sloppy. Turns out it’s a good thing, too, because he’d hate to try having this conversation if Peter were still too out of it to say much more than groaning pleas and panted whines.

Wade sighs out a whooshed exhale and bites the bullet. “I kind of kill people sometimes? It’s a whole – but I mean, I only off bad people. Like, _really_ bad. Shit stains that deserve it. The world is just – it’s a fucking nightmare out there. You – you probably know that better than I do, huh? But I can’t just – I can’t see it happening and not try to do something? I know it doesn’t actually help. Nothing really helps. Kill one sick fuck and two more pop up in their place. Think evil underground organization, only magnify it by six billion and cross out the underground part. But – but it’s all I can do besides wallow in self-pity and get high, so I do it.”

“What kind of –”

Not expecting the voice, Wade’s eyes dart to look at Peter without his permission.

Peter’s biting his lip, looking through his fringe of wild bedhead at him. Wade hurries to look away again, squeezes Pete’s ankle in silent encouragement. Waits.

[[Good dog.]]

[Ruff ruff.]

Finally, Peter tries again. “What kind of people do you – kill?”

He falters over that last word, clearly uncomfortable with it, laying very still. It’s – good though, right? That he’s asking. That he’s brave enough still to ask. “I get paid to take out all sorts of bad guys. Mob bosses who evade jail time, rapists, drug cartels or human traffickers… rough jobs a normal person couldn’t pull off, but I’ve got that pesky healing factor so it’s usually cake for me. Gross chopped-off body parts sort of cake, but when someone’s paying you to eat cake, you can’t complain when it tastes like shit. That’d be rude.”

“Wade?”

“Yeah, baby boy?”

“I get that this is a hard conversation to have, and it’s – we should have it, thanks for – for telling me all this. You don’t have to tell me anything at all, I shouldn’t even have a voice right now, so. Thanks and all. But –”

[There’s always a but.]

[[Butts, ha.]]

“Could we just – go back to the bed now? Deal with all this – later?”

Wade swallows. Everything feels tight and wrong, his skin pulling wrong every time he moves, and his chest feels like there’s a fist inside it squeezing his heart, wringing it out. Peter sounds – tired. But not… but not _afraid_. Just very, very tired. The heat took a lot out of him, still must be. He finally musters up the courage to look at the boy, and he looks worn down. The bruises that line his face have yellowed, now, into that last gnarly stage before they heal. Wade isn’t sure if this is just a temporary reprieve or if Pete actually means to stay, but he’ll take what he can get for as long as he can get it.

“I like the way you think,” Wade says.

“My heat’s… almost gone, I think.”

Another conversation Wade hopes they can delay. “Yeah, I noticed too.”

“Can I still –” Peter cuts himself off, bites his lip again, turning it rosy in between his teeth.

“You can ask questions, Pete.”

Peter looks down at the blanket, fingertips still running over that collar he never seems to stop playing with. Wade had suggested he take the thing off a few days ago, but it’d been a mistake because Peter took that to mean ‘I don’t want you here anymore’ and had panicked mid-heat, begging to be allowed to stay, please, please, he’d do better, he’s healing, he’ll be healed soon, just a little longer and he can be used again –

Yeah. Mistake.

To be honest, he likes seeing it there anyway. Likes seeing Peter wear it.

Likes seeing Peter _like_ it.

“Can I still – stay?” Peter rushes out with. His foot is tense and unbendy under Wade’s hand. “I know I’ve been horrible the past few days. I was a mess, I’m a needy mess, but – but you were... you’re such a great alpha, I’d want to – I mean, if I do better, could I still stay here? With you? I’ll be quieter, I’m not usually – I swear I don’t usually talk this much. And I’ve – I know I’ve been eating too much, not contributing, but I can – I liked getting you off, during the heat? I’d like to – I mean, if you liked it too, I’d like to do that again? I can. Any time you want, I’ll use my mouth until I’m healed. Or my hands. Both? I can contribute.”

[What the fuck?]

[[What the fuck?]]

Wade doesn’t even know where to _start_. But White and Yellow have the right idea. “What the fuck?”

Peter’s scent is souring now, his face kind of crumbling. When he blinks, wetness falls out of his eyes and slides down his cheeks. He wipes at his face, quick to apologize. His fingers tremble as he grips the collar around his neck, holds onto it like a lifeline. “’m sorry, sorry, I’m not used to being allowed to talk this much, I’m not saying any of it right –”

“Well _yeah_ , you’re not!”

“Sorry, sorry, alpha _please_ –”

Wade slides out from under Pete’s feet, scoots on his knees on the ground toward Peter, who’s sitting up and wide-eyed, tear tracks trailing down his cheeks. The silent cries are the saddest, Wade thinks. To be taught to keep silent, to be taught that you shouldn’t take up any space, not even space enough for tears. He’s not as careful as he maybe should be as he grabs the hand Peter’s got clutching the blanket and tugs it toward him, pulls Peter off the couch so they’re on the floor together. Peter oofs as he falls, tangled in the blanket. He squishes the omega to his chest, then, wrapping him into a hug that engulfs him. Pressed into him, Wade nuzzles his nose into Peter’s hair, breathing him in. Real, real, he’s here and he’s real and he’s safe. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.

He doesn’t know he’s saying it out loud until Peter’s murmuring a sniffled, muffled, “Is it?”

Wade huffs a little laugh. “Well, no. Nothing’s okay and everything sucks. But you’re awesome, okay? You’ve got a home here forever, literally _for fucking ever_ because I can’t die and Dewie the landlord _would_ if he tried kicking me out.”

“But I’m –”

Peter cuts himself off again, his breath warm against Wade’s gnarly chest as he exhales. He probably doesn’t appreciate being pressed against all this exposed skin. This was a bad idea, horrible idea, Wade should let him go and get something to cover up with, he’s – okay, no. Peter’s got enough problems for the both of them right now, Wade’s not about to add all his issues to the mix. Peter hasn’t minded his alpha stench at all. He’s been quick to touch him during the heat, not shy around Wade’s skin. It’s fine. He’s fine. Everything’s fine.

“You’re what?” Wade says, instead of the millions of insecurities running amok in his broken-down noggin, White and Yellow adamant that he needs to back the fuck up off the omega and run for a shirt. “Adorable? Brave? Tolerant? I could keep going –”

“Broken,” Peter says. His voice is a quiet, tired murmur. “Used up. Worthless. I – I could keep going, too.”

It’s hard to say anything back. There’s a lump in his throat and he’s pretty sure he’s crying too now, because it’s all just – a mirror, isn’t it? Wade knows he’s broken and used up and worthless and no matter what anyone said about it, he’d keep right on believing it. Not that anybody tries telling him he’s not those things… but still. Peter’s brave, but he’s a little broken, too. Nobody goes through the shit he’s gone through and comes out on the other side okay. He’s not okay. Fact. Leaning his back against the couch, he tightens his arms around the omega and holds on, rocking them a bit, the small back and forth motion a soothing rhythm against the tidal wave of emotions. It’s bright outside, but Peter’s head is pressed snug against Wade’s chest so he might not notice. That’s what he needs. Outside. Sunshine. Something other than these four walls to show him that the world’s big. It’s bigger than they are, bigger than their issues. There’s got to be somewhere they could go that’d – feel freeing? Liberating? Put things into perspective? Oh, God. Wade doesn’t know what he’s doing.

They both need so much fucking therapy.

“It’s okay to be broken,” Wade finally lands on, talking into Peter’s hair. “It’s not your fault. And hey, it just means you can’t go anywhere but up from here. Broken people turn into the strongest ones. We just need to apply a little gorilla glue to all the cracked bits.”

“Are you talking about people or pottery?”

“… pottery. But we’ll fix you up too, Pete, dontchu even worry about it.”

-

-

-

Wade cuddles him for what feels like hours on the floor in front of the old yellow couch. His arms should be constraining, big and muscled and holding on tight, but Peter can’t feel anything except grateful for the contact. Grateful for a lot of things. He’s not sure how Wade came to be this way, not sure how the same world churns out horrible alphas like Harry Osborn and good, kind ones like Wade Wilson. The two feel like completely different stratospheres. He’s on the other side of a real heat cycle with an ass that was too damaged to function properly, and he’s alive to tell the tale, for one. That’s – that’s. There are no words for what that is. Peter still can’t wrap his head and heart around the past four days of constant need. He’d been out of his mind with it, begging like a slut. He’d even begged for Wade’s _knot_ at one point, which makes zero sense. Knots _hurt_.

But in that moment, his omega had _craved_ it.

God, he really is a slut. He’s everything everyone says about him and then some. A mindless whore good for only one thing, put on this earth only to be bred and claimed and filled at both ends. He’s – he feels like he could be sick thinking about it. Has he ever actually wanted to be knotted before? No, no, _absolutely not_. But he’d begged Wade for it, begged and writhed and _ached_ for it, brain all clouded, every nerve on fire as the need pulled him under. Why is Wade keeping him around? He can’t even be fucked properly. Can’t do anything right at all. Even knowing that Wade kills people for a living feels like a muted background fuzz behind all the self-disgust. Shouldn’t _that_ be the bigger concern right now? What the hell is wrong with him?

What’s wrong is that maybe he’s – _relieved_.

At least somebody is trying to fix this crap heap of a world.

At least somebody else sees how wrong it is. Finally, _finally_ Peter isn’t alone.

The cursed Parker luck somehow swung right around to Wade Wilson finding him in that alley. An alpha who’s big and scarred and chatty, who takes care of him with sponge baths and rim jobs and who’s never tried to – to _use_ him, not even on slick-damp sheets in the dead of night when anybody else would have. Arms wrapped around Wade’s middle, head on his chest with that heartbeat thumping under his ear, on the scratchy carpet of this broken-down apartment, Peter Parker swears to himself that he’ll hold onto this somehow. That as long as Wade keeps being Wade, Peter’s going to have to find a way to find Peter again. To find himself and fix himself and _keep this_.

He listens to Wade’s heart beating, hears the alpha’s quiet murmur above his head as he talks about needing to put in another grocery order, where’s his fucking phone, anyway, how’d he manage to lose the thing when they haven’t even gone anywhere, Weasel’s the guy who hides bodies for him and it’s hella suspish that he isn’t answering Dewie’s calls… Peter zones out listening to these things. Hyper focuses on them to block out the loud, horrible world right outside Wade’s doors. The omega below isn’t being used right now, but he’s crying all alone. Chains rattle as he wipes his nose with the back of his hand, sniffles. His owner must be out.

Peter _should not_ be able to hear all that.

His arms tighten around Wade. He listens to his heartbeat, to his soft, soft voice.

There’s at least one good person in the world.

And that?

That means there’s _hope_.


End file.
